In this lab activity students are given five different map views of the continent of Australia: Geology, Gravity Anomaly, Magnetic Anomaly, Digital Elevation, and Satellite Image, and asked to investigate and interpret these different data sets. The primary goal is to introduce students to the potential of geophysical data for regional geologic and tectonic investigations.

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Students describe MARGINS research results in a two to four minute oral class presentation. The assignment is appropriate for any class that covers topics related continental margins.

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An activity that I successfully used twice in teaching Active Tectonics is one I call "The News Hour," patterned after the PBS New Hour. I generated the idea out of concern that active tectonics sets of class readings are so broad, diverse, and and voluminous that it can be intimidating both for students and faculty to think about how best to prepare for a given class. I concluded that one way to achieve context is to set up a brief dialogue that removes 'geospeak' and centers a focus on societal implications of active tectonic phenomena.

ACTIVE TECTONICS, SOCIETY, EARTHQUAKES, MEDIA

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Students work on this Lecture Tutorial worksheet on ocean crust ages in groups during lecture. It directly confronts misconceptions students have about the patterns of ages of the ocean crust, and interpretations that can be made.

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Students use the height and radius of Olympus Mons to estimate its volume. They then propose a method to estimate the volume of lava that has erupted over from the Hawaiian hotspot over time. I then show them a graph of the cumulative volcanic volume as a function of distance from Kilauea (from Clague and Dalrymple). They compare these volumes and also consider the possibility that some of the lava erupted from the Hawaiian hotspot has been subducted.

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Users can choose a time in geologic history, select the link, and see what the Earth looked liked in the far distant past. Each map features a brief written description of the events occurring at that time, and a link to additional information on the geologic era or period being shown. There are also maps that show what the Earth might look like in the future, 50, 100, and 150 million years from now.

Oblique subduction results in distinct sets of faults with either just thrust or mainly strike/slip motion and that back-arc thrust belts show little oblique strain compared to forearc areas.

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Join Graham Kent, director of Scripps Instiotution of OceanographyŐs Visualization Center, for a cutting-edge presentation providing a futuristic tour of plate boundary Evolution along the western United States. (57 minutes)

Join Scripps Institution's Donna Blackman as she shares a fascinating look at tectonic plate spreading and the discovery of a "lost-city" of hydrothermal vents and the unique creatures that dwell there. (46 minutes)

The pet rock project is a semester-long project in which each student randomly selects an igneous or metamorphic rock from the instructor or brings in a rock from an appropriate locality, and follows all of the steps a petrologist would take to interpret an igneous or metamorphic rock from an unknown area. This project runs in the background of the petrology class during the initial part of the semester while the student acquires the petrologic skills to make more sophisticated interpretations. The culmination of the project is for each student to spend several hours with the instructor using the electron microprobe to identify more difficult minerals with certainty, to produce high quality digital backscattered electron images and to obtain quantitative electron microprobe analyses of selected minerals that aid in the interpretation of the pet rock. Ultimately, the student interprets the rock, generally with the assistance of the instructor, writes a report explaining the process and results and presents the results to the class.

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This is a laboratory-style investigation wherein students examine the petrography and major-element geochemistry of 6 samples of mid-ocean ridge basalt and related differentiated lavas recovered from the Cleft segment of southern Juan de Fuca Ridge, a medium spreading-rate MOR in the northeast Pacific Ocean. Lava types range from basalt to dacite.

After some initial background information on basalts, the MOR environment, and the study area students investigate four thin sections, beginning with typical basalts and ending with a dacite. They are led through a series of directed questions that help them gain familiarity with commonly occurring minerals and textures in mid-ocean ridge lavas. Questions direct students toward the interpretation of quench-related textural features and crystallization sequence, as well as a few other textural observations and petrographic techniques. After proceeding through the initial four thin sections and associated questions student are then asked to undertake "full thin-section descriptions" of the remaining two samples.Â

After investigating the thin-sections and determining a possible crystallization sequence from the petrographic data gathered (plagioclase followed by olivine followed by augitic clinopyroxene followed by pigeonite), students examine a P-T phase diagram to constrain possible pressures of formation. Discovering that crystallization pressures were low (less than ~ 0.75 GPa) students then examine a phase diagram of the olivine-plagioclase-augite-quartz system (olivine-quartz-augite ternary, projected from the plane of plagioclase saturation) [Walker, 1979]. Students draw 2 possible liquid lines of descent (LLD) onto the diagram, and then use their petrographic observations to qualitatively plot the samples along that LLD, determining a relative sequence of chemical evolution for the suite of samples. Lastly, given those determinations, student graph the major element data for the lava suite to infer paths of chemical evolution and the effects of fractional crystallization (possibly coupled with magma mixing).

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This is one component of the Seismogenic zone Experiment Mini Lessons
This mini lesson provides an example of how stratigraphy influences tectonics, and vice versa. The magnitude 9 Tohoku earthquake slipped a record 50m along a plate boundary fault comprised of extraordinarily weak smectite-rich pelagic clay [Chester et al., 2013; Ujiie et al., 2013, Fulton et al., 2013]. This clay may also have served as a slip surface for numerous large tsunami and tsunamigenic earthquakes along the subduction zone to the northeast, but it facilitated none along the Japan and Izu-Bonin Trenches to the south. During this lesson students will discover the probable reasons for this dichotomy.
Students will be supplied with locations of the Tohoku earthquake ocean drilling site (C0019) and the reference Site (436) as they are back tracked through Pacific Plate motions to their locations of origin. Students will construct the vertical sedimentary sequence that would occur, using Walther's Law (Prothero and Schwab, 1996, p. 329-330).

The student-reconstructed vertical sequence of sedimentary deposits will be compared to that at IODP Site 436. Site 436 includes a conspicuous interval of pelagic clay and is the oceanic reference site for Site C0019 drilled during Exp. 343. Students will compare the vertical succession of sediment lithologies hypothetically accumulated in their backtracked site to those observed at Sites 436, C0019 and others on the oceanic plate incoming to the subduction zone. Students will learn that smooth seafloor correlates with continuity of the pelagic clay layer, whereas, areas of rough seafloor (containing seamounts capped with carbonate and siliceous pelagic sediments) correlate with discontinuity of the pelagic clay layer. They will also learn that large earthquakes and tsunamis occur only in areas of more continuous incoming pelagic clay. Students will be able to speculate on the role of seamounts in interruption of the propagation of seismic slip (e.g. Wang and Bilek, 2011, 2014).

While working in groups to facilitate peer tutoring, students manipulate a hands-on, physical model to better comprehend the dynamics of plate kinematics.

To prepare for this exercise students read the Chapter on plate tectonics in their text book. In class, they are given a color isochron map of the sea floor. They are given 4 tasks:
Answer basic questions about the timing and rate of opening of the N. and S. Atlantic;
Determine what has happened to the oceanic crust that is created on the eastern side of the East Pacific Rise;
Determine what type of plate boundary existed on the western edge of the N. America plate before the San Andreas Fault and when this transition occurred; and Reconstruct the motion of the plates over the last 40 Ma assuming that the surface area of the Earth has not changed.

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This video segment adapted from A Science Odyssey uses animation and archival footage to provide an overview of the theory of plate tectonics.

This activity seeks to have students analyze global data sets on earthquake and volcano distributions toward identifying major plate boundary types in different regions on the Earth. A secondary objective is to familiarize students with two publicly available resources for viewing and manipulating geologically-relevant geospatial data: Google Earth(TM) and GeoMapApp.

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In this exercise, students relate large-scale features on Earth's surface to lithospheric plates, the underlying asthenosphere, earthquakes, and volcanoes. After creating a cross section showing elevation using GeoMapApp, students add additional features by hand.

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Here is an exercise to acquaint students with pressure-temperature diagrams related to Earth's interior, teach why the mantle melts in the context of pressure and temperature, demonstrate the role water has on melting, and review the three ways to melt the mantle.

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This activity provides a brief introduction to GPS and provides a student activity to practice creating and reading time series plots with simplified GPS data. Students graph how a tectonic plate (and the GPS unit attached to it) has moved over a five year time period by moving a GPS model across a North-East coordinate graph. Students practice these skills by analyzing GPS time series from two GPS stations in Iceland.
Teaching Tips
Adaptations that allow this activity to be successful in an online
environment
Need to really transform to an online environment. I did have one participant draw the vectors on an online map of Iceland - however, only one person gets to do this, so I'd like to figure out other techniques for this.

Elements of this activity that are most effective

Recommendations for other faculty adapting this activity to their
own course:

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Introductory lesson that deconstructs the information that can be gleaned from a single seismogram.

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