VIRTUAL & IN-PERSON STUDENT EXPERIENCES IN FIELD GEOLOGY: A HYBRID APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF VENT 185 IN THE SAN FRANCISCO VOLCANIC FIELD, ARIZONA

Field courses that provide virtual and in-person participation can integrate components of remote sensing analysis and in-field observations to teach students about the geology of a site. This structure is more accessible and inclusive than that of traditional field courses, and results in meaningful scientific collaboration between virtual and in-person students. Virtual and in-person students in the GeoSPACE field program (NSF Award #2023124) conducted a preliminary study of Vent 185 (V185) in the San Francisco Volcanic Field. Exploration of V185 was structured as a planetary analog mission in which virtual students were “mission control” and in-person students were “astronauts”. Virtual students analyzed V185 using satellite data and in-field “rover” images (taken by faculty prior to the course) and reported their findings to in-person students prior to in-person field work. Based on those findings, the students developed mission objectives for the astronauts to carry out within one day of field work. Afterwards, all students worked together to draw conclusions about the geology of V185.

Virtual students introduced V185 as a 400 ft elongate pit in Permian sedimentary rocks of the Colorado Plateau [2000 AZGS Map]. V185’s small size made it hard to examine in the imagery, but they determined that it was largely mafic in composition with variability in iron content [Meier et al., 2022]. In-field “rover” images displayed an outcrop with layered rocks interpreted as sedimentary, and another outcrop on the opposite side of the pit interpreted as oxidized volcanics. The mission objectives prioritized ground-truthing the observations made by virtual students and finding a link between the sedimentary and volcanic units. Field observations revealed that the layered rocks were actually volcanic deposits from multiple eruptions at V185 [Khan et al., 2022]. Together, all students concluded that V185 had different eruptive styles throughout time and episodes of magma-water interaction [Baker et al., 2022]. Challenges, such as the limited spatial resolution of the remote imagery and minimal time in the field, fostered collaboration between students. Students employed remote and in-field methods to solve geological problems, which are transferable skills to studying remote areas of Earth and other planetary bodies.