Geology of the National Parks

Catalog description

"Geology of the National Parks" uses the unsurpassed features of national parks to address the key questions of geology and the environment. Each topic is introduced with a virtual field trip to a specially chosen national park (involving pictures of the park, a brief history, other highlights of the park, with supplemental materials and links provided on-line). Key questions about the park (Why has Death Valley been getting wider? Why is much of Mt. St. Helens spread across neighboring states?) then motivate discussion of the topic (here, the spreading or squeezing associated with drifting continents), with special attention to implications for humans (for example, predicting earthquakes and volcanic eruptions associated with these features). A suite of exercises provides the opportunity for analytical experience. There are no prerequisites for the course; however, students must meet the university's technical requirements for running Canvas. This course is offered online during the fall, spring, and summer sessions. The goals of the course are to help students learn how certain common-sense ideas allow science to be such a successful human endeavor, that the Earth efficiently but slowly recycles almost everything, that the Earth's environment has been nearly balanced for very long times, that human-induced changes are among the fastest Earth has ever experienced, and that the National Parks are critical but challenged living laboratories, museums, and repositories of biodiversity. In doing so, the students will see the applications to real-world problems of related fields including physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics, and will develop a greater appreciation of these other subjects. Students will be challenged to reason from data to generalizations, and from these generalizations back to cases, through exercises, quizzes, and examinations.