Know Your Planet

This exercise will provide some hands-on experience with methods used for predicting flood frequency and magnitude. We will be using the US Geological Survey (USGS) website to retrieve historical stream gauge data of the sort used to predict the likelihood of flood events of particular magnitudes during a given time interval. Such predictions are the basis for numerous engineering, restoration and development projects in and around rivers.

We will retrieve data for a river in Oregon, use a spreadsheet to analyze the data, and assess the probability of occurrence of floods of particular magnitudes (in terms of discharge), or the likely magnitudes of events of a given recurrence interval. We will then repeat the exercise for the Taunton River in southeastern Massachusetts.

In this lab exercise on mapping, you’ll have the chance to get a fairly realistic picture of how geologists go about making a geological map. Think of the lab room as a land area of 10 km2 with no topographic relief. Assume that the land surface is the tabletops, but that there’s enough local relief for you to see bedrock outcrops (i.e. the rocks on the tables).

The purpose of today’s lab is to explore the relationship between the velocity of seismic waves and the properties of the materials they travel through (Temperature, pressure, stiffness, density…). We will focus on seismic shear-waves (S-waves), which are elastic vibrations in the direction perpendicular to their direction of propagation.

Lab on plate tectonics. 

You have been assigned to one of four scientific specialties and to one of four plates or plate groupings.

The scientific specialties are:

1. Seismology
2. Volcanology
3. Geomorphology
4. Geochronology

The plates or plate groupings are:

1. North American Plate
2. Pacific Plate
3. African Plate
4. Eurasian Plate

Each scientific specialty group has been provided a world map showing data relevant to locating plate boundaries and understanding plate boundary processes. Each student will be provided two blank maps. You will mark these as described below and turn them in at the end of the exercise.

This lab constitutes four parts. In the first three sessions, you will familiarize yourselves with the characteristics of – and learn to describe, identify and interpret – the three main types of rock: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic.

Although more than 2,000 different mineral species have been identified, only 25 or 30 are abundant constituents of rocks. The purpose of this exercise is to acquaint you with these common rock-forming minerals. The most diagnostic physical properties of these minerals are listed in the Mineral Identification Index.