This module series is designed to teach introductory-level college-age geology students about the basic processes and dynamics that produce earthquakes. Students learn about how and why earthquakes are distributed at plate boundaries using 3D visualizations of real data. These 3D visualizations were designed to allow students to more easily visualize and experience complex and highly visual geologic concepts. 3D visualizations allow students to examine features of the Earth from many different scales and perspectives, and to view both the space and time distributions of events. For example, students can view the earth from the perspective of the entire solar system, or from one point on the Earth's surface, and can visualize how earthquakes along a fault occur through time. By teaching about earthquakes and plate tectonics using a real data set that students can visualize in three-dimensions, students learn how scientists analyze large data sets to look for patterns and test hypotheses. At the end of this module students will understand how earthquakes are distributed on Earth, and how different types of plate boundaries result in different magnitudes and distributions of earthquakes.

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Prior to this homework assignment, students will have been exposed (for ~2-3 in class activities and lectures) to general concepts in plate tectonics, plate boundaries, hot spot volcanoes, use of earthquake/volcano trends at plate boundaries, as well as GPS as a modern use to document plate motion. Students receive this activity as a homework assignment to be completed outside of class. Their task is to use provided topographic/bathymetric data, earthquake and volcano distribution, GPS data, as well as ocean floor and hot spot age trends to characterize plate motion in modern, future, and ancient plate boundaries. This is a three-part exercise that involves a modern plate boundary study form the eastern margin of the Pacific plate, a potential future plate boundary in eastern Africa, and a identification of possible ancient plate boundaries in the Eurasian plate.

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Students will plot the locations of earthquakes on the top of subducting slabs to determine slab dip and will then develop hypotheses regarding the relationship between slab dip, the depth of the slab, and volcanic activity on the surface.

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Despite what we have learned from the theory of plate tectonics, the specifics of how those plate motions contribute to movement along faults remain a matter of much debate. Since the discovery of plate tectonics, scientists have recognized that earthquake activity, both the orientation and magnitude, is related to plate motions. However, efforts to total up the motion simply associated with earthquakes often falls far short of the plate motions. This suggests that plates have a way to slide past one another along faults without generating earthquakes, and discovering what controls whether faults produce earthquakes is critical for better characterizing seismic hazards around the world. Scientists are using a combination of GPS and seismometer recordings to investigate this issue. Some portions of a fault reveal traditional earthquake stick-slip behavior where gradual GPS motions show the fault is locked for a long time while plate motions cause stress to accumulate at the fault until the rocks break and the fault moves over the span of minutes generating large seismic signals and an abrupt GPS motion. In 2003, researchers discovered that portions of a fault also release accumulated stress more gradually over the course of several weeks in the form of a slow slip event that is accompanied by weak seismic tremors observed in a narrow frequency range that requires specific filtering to observe. These new phenomena are described as episodic tremor and slip as they recur on nearly an annual basis, much more frequently than large earthquakes which can have recurrence intervals of 50-5000 years. To better understand how faults move, this activity will examine both GPS and seismic data in the Cascadia region to identify key observations and build interpretation from them.

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The EERC at the University of Bristol has developed an Earthquake Engineering Competition that challenges secondary school students to design and make small scale models of buildings that can withstand strong earthquakes. Provided on the website are tips for model design and construction, load testing advice, and a gallery of models organized by various characteristics.

In this activity, students will make observations about the core that was collected on IODP expedition 310.

Provenance: Beverly Owens, Cleveland Early College High School
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Students observe a virtual ocean basin and two adjacent continental margins. From the characteristics of the sea floor and adjacent land, students infer where plate boundaries might be present. They then predict where earthquakes and volcanoes might occur. Finally, they draw their inferred plate boundaries in cross section.

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This course begins by introducing students to aspects of fluid dynamics relevant to transport and deposition of particulate sedimentary materials. Emphasis is on the structure of turbulent shear flows and the forces exerted by fluid motions on bed of loosed sediment. With fluid dynamics as background, the course deals with sediment movement as bed load and suspended load, and with the geometry, kinematics, and dynamics of ripple and dune bed forms. The course concludes with basic material on the styles of current-generated primary sedimentary structures, with emphasis on cross stratification.

This is a college-level adaptation of a chapter from the Earth Exploration Toolbook. The students download global quake data over a time range and use GIS to interpret the tectonic context.

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Students and faculty participate in an integrated effort to characterize hydrologic relationships using hydrologic, geologic & geophysical data

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Formative assessment questions using a classroom response system ("clickers") can be used to reveal students' spatial understanding.
Students are shown this diagram and instructed to "Click where the bottom of the lithosphere will be after the mountains have eroded away."

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The following topical questions and selected resources are designed to guide you through the current debate on the origin of Yellowstone hotspot: does it originate from processes operating only in the shallow portions of the Earth's mantle, or from a deeper-seated feature, perhaps a mantle plume generated at the core-mantle boundary? The resources linked from this page include an assortment of web- and non-web resources, published papers, abstracts, and graphics. Direct links to web resources are followed by a "more info" link that gives a short description of the web resource. These resources by no means comprise a comprehensive treatment of the literature on the subject, but should at least give you a place to start in your study of the origin of the Yellowstone hotspot.

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In this exercise, we analyze the trends in the CO2 record monitored at Mauna Loa, (the 'Keeling Curve'). This is an exercise in data handling, interpolation, trend estimation and extrapolation.

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This lecture/activity allows students to "play with" a toy Slinky in order to recognize the implications of an elastic rheology to deformation at shallow crustal levels. Building on already-covered concepts of elasticity and friction, this module adds seismic first motions and earthquake locations to the students conceptual tool bag. As such, this module can be used to segue into other areas of geophyics that are of importance in structural geology (e.g., active tectonics, hazards).

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This exercise set explores marine sediments using core photos and authentic datasets in an inquiry-based approach. Students' prior knowledge of sea floor sediments is explored in Part 1. In Parts 2-3 students observe and describe the physical characteristics of sediment cores and determine the composition using smear slide data and a decision tree. In Part 4 students develop a map showing the distribution of the primary marine sediment types of the Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans and develop hypotheses to explain the distribution of the sediment types shown on their map.

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Students learn about the weighted mean by building spreadsheets that apply this concept to the average density of the oceanic lithosphere.

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Students learn about the weighted mean by building spreadsheets that apply this concept to the average density of the oceanic lithosphere.

College-level adaptation of the Earth Exploration Toolbook chapter. Students work with a free GIS program, ArcVoyager SE, to explore earthquake data and plate tectonics.

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In this video segment adapted from ZOOM, cast members make a seismometer and experiment with different ways to make it register movement.

This lesson is designed to reinforce the basic skill sets and concepts introduced in Lessons 1‐3 of this module. Students will use the steps of the Geographic Approach to explore data sets and images in a scientific manner.

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