DECIPHERING PLEISTOCENE CLIMATIC CHANGES IN THE ESTANCIA BASIN OF CENTRAL NEW MEXICO FROM A GOOGLE EARTH "FIELDTRIP"

The Estancia Basin of central New Mexico contains landforms that reveal lake level changes throughout the late Pleistocene. Stream channels that terminate at highstand lake shorelines, gypsum dunes, beach ridges, and deflation basins with associated lunette deposits are readily identifiable in aerial imagery and lend themselves to a “virtual fieldtrip.” I have embedded placemarks and outcrop photographs within Google Earth along with a series of questions that lead students to unravel the climatic history of the basin as reported in Allen and Anderson (2000). Students employ their understanding of sedimentary environments, cross-cutting relationships, and stratigraphy to unravel cycles of lake expansion as well as a two-stage mid-Holocene drought.