INTEGRATING CLASSROOM AND LAB PROJECTS WITH FIELDWORK AND FIELD TRIPS: RESULTS OF A TSG WORKING GROUP

At the workshop on Teaching Structural Geology (TSG) in the 21st Century , a group was tasked with devising ways to encourage and enable greater integration of fieldwork and field trips with classroom and lab projects. An on-line teaching resource being developed provides 1) field-based exercises for classroom or field trip use, 2) a database with field trip destinations and structural geology exercises, and 3) a data entry page that allows any worker to upload new contributions to these categories.

Three field-based exercises now online represent sites in the Northeast, mid-continent, and West Coast, USA. The existing project sites are in Garden of the Gods, Colorado; Rainbow Basin, California and Taconic slate belt in Vermont. The Garden of the Gods project provides geological description, a simplified structural map, images of spectacular tectonic landforms and outcrop-scale faults, and a faults and striae database. The exercise involves stereographic analysis of the structural data for individual faults and for cumulative datasets and kinematic and dynamic interpretation of results. The Rainbow Basin project features an open, doubly-plunging syncline and a superb conjugate fracture array. The hands-on activities described for the two sites could be used for short projects to accompany lecture material on brittle fracture theory and/or extended lab projects involving use of the stereographic net. Images of reduction spots and deformed graptolites from Taconic slates form the basis of the third project in which students are lead through measurement, graphing and interpretation of both strain ratio and absolute strain data. Suggestions are provided for incorporating these results in lecture and field localities are described with accompanying images. Multi-day field investigations are described for Baraboo, WI, the Bear Valley Strip Mine, PA, the Hudson Valley Fold and Thrust belt, New York and the Arbuckle Mountains, OK. There are also single field trip stops that are ideal for teaching structural geology. A submission page allows workers to upload their own stops and we anticipate that a database of such stops will allow faculty to choose from a wide selection in designing field trips. We invite new contributions and broad participation for the dynamic growth of this TSG resource, at http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/structure04/resources.html.