GOOGLE EARTH PRO AS THE GIS TOOL FOR GLACIAL GEOLOGY PROJECTS

At University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Glacial Geology (GEOS 420) is an upper-level course taught every three semesters, drawing geoscience and environmental studies majors. The course has, at its core, a process-based glacial geomorphology emphasis, with time spent on traditional glacial geology but also glaciology, ice dynamics, and climate change. The course is a 4-credit class, run as three 1-hour lectures and a 3-hour lab. Glacial Geology culminates in an individual capstone poster presentation, where students investigate a glacial or periglacial topic in a specific region. The region changes every year, having so far focused on Alaska one year and on Svalbaard another. The project is scaffolded throughout the course, with labs focusing on skills that can be used for completion of the project and other assignments focusing on various scientific skills, such as writing an abstract.

For the labs, the main computing tool used is Google Earth Pro. Google Earth Pro (GEP) is a freely available desktop software package for mapping and basic GIS based around up-to-date and historical satellite imagery. Likely due to students’ familiarity with Google Maps, students tend to quickly adapt to GEP. Relevant labs in this course include an introduction to learn various tools and a lab focused on measuring change in glacial areas over time. GEP is used as a tool throughout other labs, including to locate and download data from ice cores and to map glacial landforms on campus. Skills that students get from these labs include manipulating placemarkers, producing basic maps, making and measuring polygon areas, making topographic cross sections, importing GIS data into Google Earth, and exploring historical imagery.

Students’ projects have included topographic analysis of glaciated mountains over different climatic regimes, change in glacial area or calving volume, shoreline erosion in Arctic regions, and glacial lake drainage prediction. Building skills in the labs is an essential component to the success of these projects. Before they use their GEP skills for their research, they have already received feedback and practice from the relatively lower stakes lab assignments. Informally, many students have remarked on how the skills they gained in this class have been useful not only in other courses but also in positions beyond campus.