A NEW ANIMATION OF SUBDUCTION ZONE PROCESSES DEVELOPED FOR THE UNDERGRADUATE AND COMMUNITY COLLEGE AUDIENCE

Oceanic lithosphere is created at divergent plate margins (spreading ridges) and is destroyed at convergent plate margins, where it sinks back into the mantle in subduction zones. Subduction is responsible for dangerous natural hazards – earthquakes, explosive volcanism, and tsunamis - but also produces continental crust and important mineral deposits. A range of geoscientific efforts including NSF MARGINS and GeoPRISMS initiatives have advanced our understanding of subduction zone processes, but communicating these exciting results to the nonexpert audience is not easy. This gap is partly because there are no animations that show how subduction zones operate in a way that is both scientifically sound and asthetically pleasing. This deficiency reflects the disparate expertises of geoscientists who know the science but have weak animation skills and digital artists and animators who have strong skills in showing objects in motion but are not experts in natural processes like plate tectonics. With a small grant from NSF (DUE-1444954) we set about to generate a realistic subduction zone animation aimed at university undergraduate and community college student audience by first working within our university to rough out a draft animation and then contract a professional to use this to construct the final version. UTD Geosciences faculty (Stern) and graduate student (Lieu) teamed up with faculty from UTD School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication (ATEC)(Farrar, Fechter, and McComber) to identify and recruit talented ATEC undergraduate students (Mantey, Ward) to work on the project. Geoscientists assembled a storyboard and met weekly with ATEC undergraduates to generate a first draft of the animation, which guided development of an accompanying narrative. The draft animation with voice-over was then handed off to professional animator Windler (Archistration CG) to generate the final animation. We plan to show both the student-generated draft version and the final animation during our presentation. The final animation will be freely available via the internet and will also be used as a supplement for McGraw-Hill textbooks in oceanography, physical geology, Earth science, geography, historical geology, natural hazards, and natural resources.