IT'S ABOUT TIME: PLANS FOR INSTALLATION OF TRAIL OF TIME AT GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK AND INVESTIGATIONS OF PUBLIC COGNITION OF DEEP TIME AND EARTH PROCESSES

The Trail of Time is a unique geoscience education exhibition at Grand Canyon that offers an exceptional opportunity for informal education in geoscience. The Trail (to be installed over the next 3 years) is a paved 3-km-long fully accessible walking trail along the rim of Grand Canyon. This trail will be marked as a time line such that one meter corresponds to one million years of Earth history. Walking the Trail, visitors will gain an understanding of the magnitude of geologic time, and will engage with key processes and events in the geologic evolution of the region at appropriate waypoints and vistas. The Trail of Time geoscience exhibition is place-based, using the Grand Canyon itself as an immersion environment. It will reach 4 to 5 million annual visitors as well as an extended audience of online and formal learners. The Trail of Time's geoscience interpretation plan will focus on moving visitors up a ladder of learning hierarchies. It will catalyze significant innovations in informal science education, accessibility, and diversity for outdoor exhibits within the National Park Service (NPS), the nation's largest informal educator. Integrated, factually correct, and up-to-date knowledge gained about the Earth in this location, as well as increased visitor interest and awareness about geoscience, is transferable to other venues. The project is collaborative and innovative in many dimensions of informal science education. Our design, implementation, and evaluation plans combine advanced and traditional technologies for outdoor exhibits. The online Virtual Trail of Time, and rigorous assessment plans and instruments, will be applicable to other projects. Research components include: investigation of place-meaning, ethnogeology of Canyon-based Native American cultures, evaluation of knowledge hierarchies and islands of expertise, and research on cognition of deep time and geologic change, including the use of analogies in naturalistic settings. The Trail of Time exhibition provides a unique opportunity for NSF to develop a partnership with the NPS to develop a larger vision for geoscience education that merges the large and motivated audiences of the NPS at the national level with new research advances from NSF-funded projects, and state-of-the-art informal science education innovations.