We are very happy that you have decided to join us this semester. Before we begin our semester of study together, it is important that you review all of the material in the Orientation and on our course syllabi. These two resources will prepare you to be successful in this course and will make the journey over the next 16 weeks significantly easier for you.
You should complete the Orientation before the first week of class so you are prepared.
The following is an overview of the activities for the Orientation. Detailed directions and submission instructions are located on the page containing the assignment within this orientation. Some course activities will take place in Canvas.
Tasks | Page of Orientation |
---|---|
Personalize your course management system (CMS) space. | The Learning Environment |
Forward your CMS e-mail to your regular email | The Learning Environment |
Bookmark the course website [1] | The Learning Environment |
Introduce yourself and meet the rest of the class. | Getting to Know You |
Learn about what to expect in the course | Course Introduction |
Learn about Modern Earth Science Principles | Modern Earth Science Principles |
Download the Course Syllabus for your campus | Syllabus |
(Note: You may want to print this page to serve as a checklist as you go along.)
Have you looked at the syllabus yet? This Orientation complements and expands on the information provided on the syllabus. If you haven't read it, be sure to review that document carefully! It is linked from this website and may also be available in Canvas.
There are two ways you can get help in the class.
For the quickest response directly from your professor, use email through your course management system (e.g., Canvas). We will check several times daily during the week and daily on weekends. Please use this mode of communication for questions and concerns you do not wish the rest of the class to see.
If you have any questions that you want to share with the class, please post them to our Questions? discussion forum (not e-mail), located in Canvas. We will check that discussion forum daily to respond. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate.
Once you are ready, click the next link in the orientation menu and work all the way to the end of the list.
The materials for this course were developed by three professors, two at Penn State (Dr. Michael Arthur and Dr. Damien Saffer) and one at Utah State (Dr. Patrick Belmont). Dr. Maureen Feineman and Dr. Erin DiMaggio teach the course yearly.
Pennsylvania State University-University Park | |
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Dr. Michael Arthur![]() |
Michael Arthur is a sedimentary geologist/geochemist with an interest in climate and paleoclimate and water/rock interactions. He is a Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, where he has worked since 1990, and is Co-Director of the Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research at Penn State. He received his Bachelors and Masters Degrees at the University of California, Riverside, and a PhD from Princeton University. He has previously worked with the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of South Carolina, and the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the Geological Society of America. Among other awards, he has received the Francis P. Shepard Medal in Marine Geology from the Society of Sedimentary Geology and the Lawrence L. Sloss Medal from the Geological Society of America. |
Dr. Demian Saffer |
Much of my research lies at the exciting crossroads between geohydrology, active tectonics, fault mechanics, and structural geology. My group’s research focuses on quantifying the relationships between fluid flow, mechanics and deformation, solute transport, and heat transport in a range of geologic settings. Specifically, my group's work centers on two basic themes: (1) understanding factors that control the distribution and magnitude of fluid pressure, particularly at active plate boundaries, and (2) constraining the flow pathways and fluid budgets in these dynamic hydrologic and tectonic settings. |
Dr. Erin DiMaggio |
Erin DiMaggio is a sedimentary geologist and volcanologist in the Department of Geosciences at Penn State University. Her research is focused on extensional sedimentary basins and tephrochronology. She received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan, and Masters and PhD from Arizona State University. Before joining the faculty at Penn State in 2014 she taught at Occidental College in Los Angeles. She has taught classes in sedimentary geology, and field geology, as well as freshman seminars. She conducts research primarily in Africa but has also worked on geomorphology and tectonics-related projects in Spain and Mexico. Erin is part of an interdisciplinary team made up of geologists, archaeologists, and paleoanthropologists that work together to solve important questions about human evolution in Africa. Erin’s main research is focused on studying 2 to 3 million year old sedimentary rocks and volcanic ash layers in Ethiopia to learn about past depositional environments, rift tectonics, and volcanic systems. |
Dr. Maureen Feineman |
I am interested in understanding the processes that take place beneath the Earth’s surface in the lower crust and upper mantle. My primary tool is geochemistry. I use a combination of analytical geochemistry, experimental petrology, and numerical modeling to understand subsurface processes. A main focus of my research has to do with fluid-rock interaction at subduction zones, including metamorphic reactions in the downgoing slab, interaction of slab-derived materials with the mantle wedge, and volcanic processes occurring immediately prior to and during eruptions at volcanic arcs. |
Utah State University |
|
Dr. Patrick Belmont |
Patrick Belmont is an Assistant Professor in the Watershed Sciences Department at Utah State University. His research combines hydrology and geomorphology with general interests in landscape evolution and sediment dynamics of modern river systems. He works in a wide variety of landscapes, from the upper Midwest, to the Pacific Northwest, southern Utah and Death Valley. Some of the over-arching questions of his research program include: How do climate, geologic history, and human activities in a landscape influence river hydrology and sediment dynamics? What are the mathematical laws that govern the erosion, transport, and deposition of sediment and how do those processes function at the watershed scale? How do landscapes and ecosystems co-evolve? What are the primary drivers and feedback mechanisms that determine the dynamics of life and it's landscape? Patrick teaches several courses at USU, including Small Watershed Hydrology, Fundamentals of Watershed Science, and Sediment Transport in Stream Assessment and Design. Prior to coming to USU in 2009, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Minnesota working with the National Center for Earth Surface Dynamics in the Department of Civil Engineering. Research during his post-doc identified a profound shift in sources of fine sediment in the upper Mississippi River Basin. Specifically, fifty years ago the majority of the sediment was derived from agricultural fields. More recently, the amount of sediment has not changed, but the source has shifted to near-channel erosion of streambanks and bluffs, which dramatically changes the conservation, policy and management strategies needed to reduce sediment loading. Prior to Minnesota, Patrick completed his PhD (geomorphology) and MS (aquatic ecology) in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Lehigh University and his BS in Molecular Biology at Texas Christian University. In his shrinking pot of spare time, Patrick explores/skis the mountains near Logan, Utah where he lives with his wife and daughter, and with diminishing frequency and ability, runs and plays golf. |
This materials for this class are on on the World Wide Web. Registered students in this course will need to navigate between several environments in the World Wide Web. These include:
The content of this course is divided into three broad areas or units. Each unit is made up of Modules. There are ten modules in the course, eight are one week in length and two are two week in length.
Unit 1: Fresh Water: Scarcity or Surfeit? [3]
Unit 2: Physical Hydrology [6]
- Module 4: Flood and Drought [8]
- Module 5: Dam It All! [9]
- Module 6: Groundwater Hydrology [10] (two weeks)
Unit 3: Social Science of Water [11]
- Module 7: What is in your water? [12]
- Module 8: Cities in Peril [13](two weeks)
- Module 9: Water and Politics [14]
- Module 10: Solving the Water Crisis? [15]
*Please refer to the assignment page in the course orientation [16] and your course syllabus for more details including assignment weighting and final grade calculation.
Penn State uses an online course management system called Canvas to deliver most of its online courses to registered students. (For more information about Canvas, visit the Getting Started with Canvas page). Canvas organizes content using different sections in its site. Here is how we use it for the Penn State courses that use this course text. (Registered students might want to open Canvas in a second tab or browser window while studying this page.)
Main Menu in the left pane:
Menu of links once inside a course:
For a more complete introduction to Canvas please see the Getting Started with Canvas page.
To get the most out of Canvas, registered students should configure their Canvas profiles as follows:
When in Canvas, at the bottom-left corner of the screen you will see a round icon with a question mark. Click this question mark icon for a list of options, including "Search the Canvas Guides", which provides lots of information about how to operate in the Canvas site.
This site includes the majority of the instructional materials for this class. There are a few things you should know about this web site.
This site uses a "tab" interface to organize content. The tabs are used as follows:
Before you begin working through the course content, you need to make sure the computer you are using is configured properly for the multimedia that you will encounter. Below are specifications and tests to help make sure everything is in working order.
Access to a reliable Internet connection is required for this course. A problem with your Internet access may not be used as an excuse for late, missing, or incomplete coursework. If you experience problems with your Internet connection while working on this course, it is your responsibility to find an alternative Internet access point, such as a public library or WiFi hotspot.
This site is considered a secure web site which means that your connection is encrypted. We do however link to content that isn't necessarily encrypted. This is called mixed content. By default, mixed content is blocked in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. This may result in a blank page or a message saying that only secure content is displayed. Follow the directions below to view the mixed content.
We have Flash movies and QuickTime video material in many of the lessons in this course. Chances are pretty good that you already use a Web browser that is configured to open up a QuickTime movie and play SWF (Flash) files, but to be safe, here is a "test" file (36 seconds) that you should try out now to make sure you won't have problems later in the course. If these files run smoothly for you, then you're ready to go. If you can't get the file below to play on your computer, then please refer to the steps at the bottom of this page to troubleshoot your problem.
Water and Society must be viewed using one of the following browsers: Firefox (any version), Safari (versions 5.1 or 6.0) or Internet Explorer with the MathPlayer Plugin [20]. If you use any other browsers there will be pages that do not render properly.
You MAY be using Google Earth in a few of the modules. It is a very standard program that works on both Macs and PCs. Go to Google Earth [21]and download the latest version for your computer. Later in the orientation, there is a tutorial to help familiarize you with the software.
This course uses many equations. In order to view the equations, you must use one of the following browsers. This list supersedes the list of browsers found on the Technical Requirements page.
If you use any other browsers there will be pages that do not render properly. If you need technical assistance at any point during the course, please contact the Outreach Helpdesk [22] (for World Campus students) or the ITS Help Desk [23] (for students at all other campus locations).
All Penn State students qualify as eligible users of the library and can borrow materials."Eligible users include currently enrolled or employed Penn State faculty, staff, and students in good standing who do not have access to a Penn State campus." So just like any on-campus Penn State student, as an online Penn State student you have a wealth of library resources available to you too! All you need to do to gain access is to properly register. So make sure that you complete the Activity at the bottom on the page.
All World Campus students should use the World Campus Library home page. [31] Please also review the library information for Off-Campus Users [32] for more information.
So that we can be sure you are able to access reserve readings and other library resources in this course, follow these steps NOW:
Don't forget! If you have a question you can just ASK! [33] a librarian! They are there to help you! The ASK! page will connect you to librarians in a manner that meets your needs; e-mail, phone, or use the chat window for a quick response!
What does this mean? Quite simply, it means being active in the course on a regular basis. It means keeping in sync with what's going on in the course, staying on top of deadlines and assignments, asking for help when necessary, and taking every opportunity to interact with the content and the instructors. It means making this course a regular part of your routine. Do this, and frankly, it will be difficult for you NOT to succeed in this course.
In online courses, the role of both the instructors AND the students tends to shift from the traditional classroom roles. The instructors' role is similar to that of good supervisors, and the students' role is closer to that of a good employee. The instructors define and set overall goals, outcomes, and time lines; make the information, resources, and experiences available to you to meet those goals; and, provide the support, guidance, communication channels, and feedback to help you succeed. The students' primary responsibilities are to stay on task; to manage their time and energy in order to get everything done on a weekly basis; to ask for guidance when in need of clarification; and to take every opportunity available to improve their chances of success.
So, the very best advice we can offer you is to be engaged in this course at least nine hours each week, and log on 5-6 days of the week to spread out your study and thinking time. In the final analysis, completing multiple online sessions of quality study time is a tried-and-true recipe for success in this course.
Here are some quick tips to keep in mind when preparing to be successful in an online course:
It is a good idea to record any questions you might develop as you move through the content. Maintaining a digital course notebook is a great idea (you can use Microsoft OneNote, Evernote, etc.) to assist you. The process can be very easy with modern technology including your tablet, or computer. OneNote is often included with Microsoft Office software, and Evernote can be installed as a free app on tablets/iPad's. All software/apps work similarly and can be extremely useful once you get the hang of them, they are especially useful when you want to review content and prepare for assignment work.
And finally in this course which has a lab component, it is critical that you read the lecture materials before you come to your lab.
The links below will connect you with other resources to help support your successful online learning experience, they are from Penn State but they apply to students from anywhere and are openly available:
Penn State World Campus Strategies to Improve Online Learning [34] - This website provides links to many resources on everything from taking notes online to managing your time effectively. Please note that you must be a World Campus student to receive some of the support services mentioned on this website.
Penn State World Campus - The Corner of College and Allen Blog [35] - This blog features posts by Penn State staff and students on a wide variety of topics relevant to online learning. Learn from online students and alumni, as well as staff members dedicated to student success, how you can get the most out of your online course experience.
Penn State iStudy Online Learning Tutorials [36] - The iStudy online learning tutorials are free and available to all Penn State students. They cover a broad range of topics including online learning readiness, time management, stress management and statistics - among many others. Check out the extensive list of topics for yourself to see what topics may be of most use to you!
Netiquette is the rules of etiquette when internet manners, online etiquette, and digital etiquette all rolled into one word.
Links to more resources on netiquette:
Penn State: Effective Technical Writing in the Information Age [37]
Netiquette, by Virginia Shea [38]
Penn State Code of Conduct: [39]
Meaningful interactions among students and instructors are the hallmark of an successful online class.
Sometimes questions arise about whom to contact about a certain issue and where. Use the information below to guide you in seeking answers to your questions.
If you have any questions about the course content or activities, at any point in the course, please post them to our Discussion Forums in Canvas. That way, everyone can benefit from seeing the question and the answer! That forum will be checked at least once per day, Monday through Friday and once a day on weekends. While you are there, feel free to post your own responses if you, too, are able to help out a classmate!
If you have a question that you would prefer not to share with the rest of the class, such as about your grade, you are welcome to contact your faculty member via email through the course management system anytime. We guarantee a response within 24 hours.
Whenever you post a message in a forum or send course mail, use a descriptive subject line. Subject lines that include the gist of a question or comment increase the chances that recipients can retrieve the messages we're looking for. Poor subject lines, such as "Question" or "Lesson 1," are useless as search keywords.
The "Getting Help" link in the Resources menu (top) is a short cut to the people and resources available to you.
Now that you've had a chance to learn about the course and the online learning environment, we'd like to get to know you...and help you get to know each other! Complete the activity below, then continue with the remainder of the Course Orientation.
By the time today's undergraduates send their children to college, there will be more than eight billion people on Earth. Our climate will be punctuated by extreme weather events. One or more major metropolitan areas may have experienced a devastating earthquake or volcanic eruption. Energy resources will be strained and more expensive. This world requires both an Earth literate public and a workforce that can bring geoscience to bear on tough societal issues. Developing widespread Earth literacy and this workforce are the objectives of the InTeGrate project.
InTeGrate is a 5-year, NSF-funded STEP Center grant, running from 2012 through 2016. The STEP (STEM Talent Expansion Program) Center program enables "a group of faculty representing a cross section of institutions of higher education to identify a national challenge or opportunity in undergraduate education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and to propose a comprehensive and coordinated set of activities that will be carried out to address that challenge or opportunity within a national context." This course was developed through the InTeGrate STEP grant. For more information see the InTeGrate Project [42].
Water is a particularly critical component of Earth's sustainability. In fact, water may be THE most critical part. Here are direct facts which convey the magnitude of the current global water emergency.
More than any other resource, with the exception of food, water is crucial for human survival. Ancient civilizations were repeatedly forced to deal with the threat of diminishing water supply. Now, climate change presents a new threat by causing the supply and distribution of water to change over coming decades and centuries. This situation will be made significantly more dire by explosive population growth in parts of the world where water is scarce and by pollution that will continually limit the supply of clean drinking water. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 stated the situation very clearly: “Water and its availability and quality, will be the main pressures on, and issues for, societies and the environment under climate change.”
Upon completing this course, you will be able to:
Many of you have not had an Earth Science class before so it is necessary to prepare you for a new way of thinking that you will be practicing throughout the class.
The Earth is a wonderful, big messy pile of rock, water, and air with life teaming all over it and Earth scientists are used to dealing with this messy and highly complex system. But you are not, so lets simplify things to start. The Earth is an integration of four systems or spheres: air, water, land and life. Technically speaking these are known as the atmosphere (air), hydrosphere (water), lithosphere (land) and biosphere (life).
Modern Earth Science is focused on the connections between the spheres and this approach is extremely relevant in this course. Water is a basic human right, and climate change combined with the increase in global population and worsening pollution, are going to make clean drinking water an increasing scarce commodity in coming decades. Thus human survival (the biosphere) is going to depend more and more on access to this precious part of the hydrosphere. As you will learn the water cycle involves the atmosphere (rain and snow) and the lithosphere (soil and rock where groundwater resides in aquifers. During the course of the semester, we will consider the interactions between the different Earth systems on a continual basis. In Units 1 and 2, we consider the lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere and how they interact with each other in terms of how water flows on the Earth's surface and underground. In Unit 3 we focus on how humans use (and misuse) water and how politics enters into groundwater resources.
Because Earth scientists are continuously working at the intersection between the spheres, their field is by necessity an integrative one, meaning that the techniques that they use are built upon the connections the earth, air water and life. As we mention above, these connections are inherently complex and subject to great changes over time. Thus Earth scientists are accustomed to dealing with complexity, fluctuation and uncertainty and you will see good examples of each of these factors throughout the semester.
The complex connections between the involve what are known as “feedbacks.” These are mechanisms that dampen or accelerate the impact of one process on another. Sounds complex? The best way to explain a feedback is to give an example and the best example involves the growth of ice such as in a glacier. Ice reflects sunlight better than almost any other material on Earth, and in reflecting sunlight, it lowers the amount of energy from sunlight absorbed by Earth, which makes it colder. If the Earth becomes colder, glaciers may grow, covering more area and thus reflecting even more insolation, which in turn cools the Earth further. Thus cooling instigates ice expansion, which promotes additional cooling, and so on — this is clearly a cycle that feeds back on itself to encourage the initial change. Since this chain of events furthers the initial change that triggered the whole thing, it is called a positive feedback. There are also examples of negative feedbacks whether the chain slows the change that triggered the events. We will point examples out to you in the modules.
Moreover, when you really get involved in studying processes on Earth, you will find out that some variables are related to one another in a linear fashion, for example an increase in variable X leads to a doubling of variable Y, but in fact many processes are related in a non-linear way. At the level of this course we will not be exploring linearity and non-linearity in much detail, and as you can imagine most of the processes we discuss are non-linear.
The considerable threat of events such as sea level rise, hurricanes and tsunami to humankind has provided a boost to the Earth sciences, broadly defined to include geoscience, geography, atmospheric science, and oceanography. Massive datasets are now available to study the Earth and with technology that can handle terabytes of data in a heartbeat, this is an extraordinarily exciting time to be an Earth scientist. We will introduce you to a lot of data in this course. In the coastal zone, for example, satellite data provide elevations at centimeter accuracy and we can monitor how processes such as sea level rise and hurricanes are impacting the shoreline.
So we point out examples of complexity, feedback and Earth Systems in the modules. Whenever you see "Earth Systems, Complexity, Feedback IN ACTION" pay attention!
If you want to read more about how us Professors want you to think, check out Teaching for a Sustainable Future in Undergraduate Courses [44].
We hope that this course brings a lot of the enthusiasm that is permeating modern Earth science.
You have reached the end of the Orientation! Double-check the to-do list on the Orientation Welcome page to make sure that you have completed all of the activities listed there before continuing on to Module 1. Then click on "Modules" to move on to the first Modules.
Links
[1] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/
[2] http://psu.instructure.com/courses/1791273
[3] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/node/819
[4] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/node/3
[5] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/node/6
[6] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/node/820
[7] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/node/517
[8] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/node/524
[9] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/node/525
[10] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/node/526
[11] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/node/821
[12] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/node/527
[13] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/node/694
[14] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/node/695
[15] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/node/696
[16] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/orientation/assignments
[17] https://www.work.psu.edu/
[18] http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/win.html
[19] http://itservicedesk.psu.edu/
[20] http://www.dessci.com/en/products/mathplayer/download.htm
[21] http://www.google.com/earth/download/ge/agree.html
[22] http://tech.worldcampus.psu.edu/
[23] http://helpdesk.psu.edu/
[24] https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/friendly.php?s=Articles
[25] http://search.ebscohost.com/Community.aspx?authtype=ip&stsug=AjMo8IjwtMmOEn_ePz6zY2abj9g5rzO5NpIAOn9A9_RMpZYIeEw3sYFHdt9Q5dEIuu6QAlg0b20OSXep11sHaOG-heEOJme4R-vtwrROdsIS7G720sr6V71UPYLZc8qCesz_kTmxVBNa2xIZd0lRkzMRt4jvdDAbi3MVvWyfUlbYhQo&IsAdminMobile=N&encid=22D731263C4635373726356632153C47347373C374C374C377C373C371C376C33013&selectServicesToken=AzMaFVGqKOT9Jc9ZmZdh5IPflTsh-HCfFLfe5i5HsvfYXH325E8TRbfFAr5m9C1pfo2WSKRMmqPbG-9W6fxb_yI8xIlCOHSiEmDXbcVCAGsb08gle-tiiSICWhRv7q4lO3C9ZU941N0olCu9DIRKdbhPCeaZmkjiy65V90SGAt1g7wd8MVgwFXMLMltw2AAcMXtB6qXAqeBQYs8TELgCLe1Rw2m7-cgw2yEOO0Zy8Du6AMMVkDVPzkIHhIULaBAw1m3BjQpjIQ4M_mCo4yYTcptwNvEH_MsZai1NYMf3LR-JeNRq_kmmXsPjEinPNWBGrYlahF2kQL-_N87BylG2dbgr5j6_tU5mf5YOQklODVp3VUyBF6pAZd_eyOA
[26] https://libraries.psu.edu/services/borrow-renew/borrowing-privileges
[27] http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/reserves.html
[28] https://libraries.psu.edu/
[29] https://guides.libraries.psu.edu/c.php?g=350787
[30] https://libraries.psu.edu/research
[31] http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/wc.html
[32] http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/infosvcs/offcampus.html
[33] http://ask.libraries.psu.edu/?stream=8
[34] https://student.worldcampus.psu.edu/academic-support-resources/strategies-to-improve-online-learning
[35] http://studentblog.worldcampus.psu.edu/
[36] http://istudy.psu.edu/
[37] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/styleforstudents/c7_p2.html
[38] http://www.albion.com/netiquette/book/
[39] http://http://studentaffairs.psu.edu/conduct/
[40] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiquette_in_technology
[41] http://www.learnthenet.com/learn-about/netiquette/
[42] http://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/about/index.html
[43] http://geographyandhistory.wikispaces.com/ACTIVITIES+UNIT+2
[44] http://serc.carleton.edu/integrate/teaching_materials/index.html
[45] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth111/node/848