PolarTREC teacher Jacquelyn Hams' expedition is featured in Foundations: the Newsletter of the Geo2YC division of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers.
Beacon Valley is recognized by scientists as one of the most Mars-like environments on Earth. This lesson plan was created so that students could have the opportunity to examine the same landforms that scientists use to study the processes that operate in both of these extreme environments. There are two parts to this lesson. Teachers may choose to
The Dry Valleys region in Antarctica is known as the coldest, windiest, driest place on Earth. Beacon Valley is famous for its katabatic winds which can routinely knock fit adults and PolarTREC teachers to the ground. This lesson was created by PolarTREC teacher Jacquelyn Hams who experienced the cold and the full force of the winds in 2008
The Antarctic Research Group at Boston University is lead by Dr. David Marchant. Graduate students include Adam Lewis, Doug Kowalewski, and Kate Swanger.
Marchant's ongoing NSF funded research projects focus on:
1. Age, origin, and climatic significance of buried ice in the Dry Valleys region, southern Victoria Land
2. Response of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet to middle Miocene global
The Kuril Biocomplexity Project is a National Science Foundation-funded research project led by the University of Washington and being conducted by a team of American, Japanese and Russian scholars and students who are examining a 5000-year history of human-environmental interactions along the Kuril Island chain in the northwest Pacific Ocean. This is the link to the project website.
Students are presented with an actual series of tundra photos, which they use to develop a hypothesis for which sort of ground cover will have the most/least permafrost depth. Then they are given a set of actual data and use this to test their hypothesis
Objective
Students will:
* understand what permafrost is and how it develops
This lesson was modeled after some of the routine activities undertaken by the geologists on the Kuril Island Expedition.
Complete the following activities:
* Day 1 To measure a simple topographic profile with a level instrument or hand level and stadium rod.
* Day 2 To use the measurements from Day 1 (and/or actual measurements from the Kuril
This activity is designed to take place near or at the end of a unit on the ocean floor. Students should be familiar with the physical features of the ocean floor including the continental shelf, abyssal plain, seamounts and guyots, seafloor ridges and trenches, and submarine canyons. The students should have also previously learned about sonar methods for mapping the
In this lesson, students learn about what archaeologists do and then practice implementing these skills with "real artifacts".
Objective
Students will:
* be able to define an artifact and an archaeologist.
* use evidence to support their decisions about the origin and use of an unknown item.
The study of rock and sediment layers, or stratigraphy, can be used to introduce students to the fundamental principles of geology and to lead into the idea of geologic time. In this lesson, students are introduced to Nicolas Steno's 3 major laws of stratigraphy: the law of original horizontality, the law of superposition and the law of lateral