This unit is designed to allow students to quantitatively assess how much water is used for irrigating crops and how this varies across the United States. This unit also has students link water use to the economic value of the crops that are produced--spanning the scientific and economic disciplines. The concepts that students learn here will connect back to the Water Footprint concept that was introduced in Unit 2, as students consider the accuracy of water calculators.

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In this unit, students will design a survey (TLS and/or SfM) of a fault scarp. After conducting the survey in the field, students will analyze the data to identify the number and magnitude of possible fault displacement(s) by measuring offsets in the point cloud as well as calculate the recurrence interval of the fault based on either a known age or scarp morphometric age (or both). The goal is to create a brief report summarizing the methods used and Quaternary history of displacements on the fault. An optional extension exercise (Unit 3.5) has the students conduct a hillslope diffusion analysis is using MATLAB. Fault scarps are the topographic evidence of earthquakes large and shallow enough to break the ground surface, and are evidence of Quaternary fault activity. A primary goal of studying exposed scarps is to gain insight into the magnitude and frequency of fault slip. Scarps typically begin as step-shaped landforms and deteriorate with age through erosion. In some cases, the form of the scarp may record evidence of more than one earthquake, distinguished by a change in scarp slope. Assuming the same surface processes, the relative age of fault scarps can be determined by their morphology (shape).

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Applications of geodetic imaging in geomorphology research often center on monitoring and detecting change within a system over time. Since most geomorphic systems evolve over longer time periods -- months, years, or more -- than available in a typical field course, this unit of the module may be entirely lab-based. Or you may have students collect data -- of a fluvial system, landslide, or other geomorphic feature -- if the feature they survey has a previously collected data set upon which to compare their new data set. The goal of this unit is to teach students to transform point clouds of a feature taken some time apart into DEMs. The DEMs are then subtracted to calculate the elevation change over time.

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Is groundwater mining sustainable? In Unit 4 students compare and contrast long-term (decades) groundwater well levels in six states representing the East Coast, West Coast, and Midwest Plains states. Satellite imagery maps of the well locations will give students an idea of the land cover, specifically the presence of irrigated crops. Using groundwater well data from the USGS, students will recognize the depletion of aquifers in the western United States (e.g., the Ogallala/High Plains Aquifer), or groundwater mining, as an unsustainable practice.

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Units 3 and 4 of this module explored how water resources are used for agriculture in the United States and how this can vary depending on location. In Unit 5, students explore how agricultural practices can affect the water quality in streams, rivers, lakes, and coastal areas. Important concepts in this unit include processes that transport suspended material (e.g., sediment) and dissolved material (e.g., nutrients) away from crop fields and into regional water bodies. The effects of dissolved nutrients on the health of the water ecosystems will be presented with examples of hypoxic zones in coastal areas and lake eutrophication. This last unit is well-suited to foster student advancement in systems thinking.

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Unit 5 is the summative assessment for the module. This final exercise takes eight to ten hours. The exercise evaluates students' developed skills in survey design, execution of a geodetic survey, and simple data exploration and analysis. This summative assessment is written flexibly so that it can be applied to a variety of potential field sites and associated geoscience research questions. The unit has two parts, like most of the units in the module: Part 1, Geodetic Survey; and Part 2, Data Exploration. In addition, there is an optional Part 3, Data Processing, for students who have done Unit 4. This unit also has a number of prepared data sets for courses not able to collect field data.

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Word Count: 7669

ISBN: 978-1-55195-484-4

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Software Carpentry lesson on how to use the shell to navigate the filesystem and write simple loops and scripts. The Unix shell has been around longer than most of its users have been alive. It has survived so long because it’s a power tool that allows people to do complex things with just a few keystrokes. More importantly, it helps them combine existing programs in new ways and automate repetitive tasks so they aren’t typing the same things over and over again. Use of the shell is fundamental to using a wide range of other powerful tools and computing resources (including “high-performance computing” supercomputers). These lessons will start you on a path towards using these resources effectively.

In this podcast, Professor Chris Rudd, Dean of the faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham, describes his work with composite materials in the car industry and how it can be applied to the field of medicine.

Traditionally, patients who have lost bone in an accident or have had bone removed due to cancer have had to endure two very long and very painful operations. One operation to attach steel plates to the bone, and a second operation once the bone has healed, to remove them.

For the past ten years, Professor Rudd and his team have been researching degradable polymers that would be as strong as the steel plates, but could be absorbed by the body, thus eliminating the need for secondary surgery.

Students are first assigned reading from the textbook (Strahler and Merali, Visualizing Physical Geography) to present the concepts of the global energy balance, including the role of greenhouse gases. In class, I go over the concepts and work with the class to figure out how to calculate solar elevation angle at a given latitude at different dates. Prior to class, I had visited the website of the University of Oregon Solar Radiation Monitoring Laboratory (http://solardat.uoregon.edu/SunChartProgram.html) to generate a Sun chart for my latitude. I have copies of this chart ready. Outside, the students use a compass to find the azimuth and elevation for the sun's arc for the solstice and the equinox. They are asked to trace these different arcs using their arms to get a sense of the difference. Students are then asked to take a compass bearing of the sun's azimuth and use the sun chart to determine the time. (Usually, it is one hour off - they need to figure out why - daylight saving)

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This course covers processes and fundamentals of writing expository essays, including structure, organization and development, diction and style, revision and editing, and mechanics required for college-level writing.

Course Outcomes:

Analyze the rhetorical needs (the needs of their audience in relationship to the assignment) for academically-oriented writing assignments requiring them to use a broad range of critical thinking strategies, particularly analysis and evaluation.
Apply appropriate levels of critical thinking strategies (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation) in their written assignments.
Implement appropriate rhetorical elements and organization (introduction, thesis, development and support, definition, narration, comparison, conclusion, etc.) in their written assignments.
Locate, evaluate, and integrate high-quality information and opinion appropriate for college-level analytical and evaluation assignments.
Craft sentences and paragraphs that communicate their ideas clearly and effectively using words, sentence patterns, and writing conventions at a college level to make their writing clear, credible and persuasive.

In this science lab, students investigate Newton's Laws of Motion. Students will make and fly water bottle rockets, as well as measure the height of each rocket's flight.

 This module will introduce students to Intermediate Academic English.  Students will review the learning outcomes for the course and course policies. They will send an email to the instructor, write an introductory paragraph, and begin reviewing verb tenses.

This worksheet poses a number of sharing scenarios to which users need to propose their best selection of options for sharing. There are no right or wrong answers, but rather an opportunity to start conversations about how, where and why they might share their work with the world.

The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate how drag affects falling objects. Students will make a variety of shapes out of paper and see how size and shape affects the speed with which their paper shapes fall.

Who Built America? includes a free online textbook, primary document repository, and teaching resource created by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The textbook and supplemental resources survey the nation’s past from an important but often neglected perspective—the transformations wrought by the changing nature and forms of work, and the role that working people played in the making of modern America.

Who Built America? offers a thirty-chapter textbook accompanied by drawings, paintings, prints, cartoons, photographs, objects, and other visual media, including links to ASHP/CML’s ten documentary videos and teacher guides that supplement the book’s themes and narrative and offer perspectives on the past that were often not articulated in the written record. Each chapter includes first-person “Voices” from the past—excerpts from letters, diaries, autobiographies, poems, songs, journalism, fiction, official testimony, oral histories, and other historical documents—along with a timeline and suggestions for further reading.

This online edition features supplemental materials designed to help readers understand the practice of history. The more than forty A Closer Look essays, offer readers an in-depth investigation of a significant historical event, cultural phenomenon, or trend that is otherwise only touched upon in a chapter. The seven Historians Disagree essays provide readers with historiographic perspectives on how scholars’ approaches to key topics have changed over time, illuminating how history is an ever-evolving field of study.

The OER also includes the History Matters Repository, featuring more than 2,000 primary source resources from the History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web site. The items in this fully searchable repository contain contextual headnotes and links to related documents.

Investigating a waterwheel illustrates to students the physical properties of energy. They learn that the concept of work, force acting over a distance, differs from power, which is defined as force acting over a distance over some period of time. Students create a model waterwheel and use it to calculate the amount of power produced and work done.