GEodesy Tools for Societal Issues (GETSI): Undergraduate curricular modules that feature geodetic data applied to critical social topics

Abstract:

The GETSI project is a three-year NSF funded project to develop and disseminate teaching and learning materials that feature geodesy data applied to critical societal issues such as climate change, water resource management, and natural hazards (http://serc.carleton.edu/getsi). GETSI was born out of requests from geoscience faculty for more resources with which to educate future citizens and future geoscience professionals on the power and breadth of geodetic methods to address societally relevant topics. Development of the first two modules started at a February 2014 workshop and initial classroom testing begins in fall 2014. The Year 1 introductory module “Changing Ice and Sea Level” includes geodetic data such as gravity, satellite altimetry, and GPS time series. The majors-level Year 1 module is “Imaging Active Tectonics” and it has students analyzing InSAR and LiDAR data to assess infrastructure vulnerability to demonstratively active faults. Additional resources such as animations and interactive data tools are also being developed. The full modules will take about two weeks of class time; module design will permit portions of the material to be used as individual projects or assignments of shorter duration. Ultimately a total of four modules will be created and disseminated, two each at the introductory and majors-levels. GETSI is working in tight partnership with the Science Education Resource Center’s (SERC) InTeGrate project on the module development, assessment, and dissemination to ensure compatibility with the growing number of resources for geoscience education. This will allow for an optimized module development process based on successful practices defined by these earlier efforts.