Discovery Topics

This section allows students to explore plate tectonic processes by accessing earthquake data cataloged by the International Seismological Centre. Students will examine earthquakes by their location, depth, magnitude, and date. By using QUEST students will interactively examine their ideas and hypotheses about earthquake generation and deduce underlying dynamic earth processes.

This section gives students a basic understanding of types of volcanoes and their eruptive styles. Students will be able to map different types of volcanoes, examine their spatial distribution, and determine the time of their last known eruption. The volcano database comes from the Smithsonian Institution Volcanology Project.

This section allows students to map topographic features for different regions. In addition, the QUEST tool allows students to change sea level interactively, visualize its effects and consider their social impacts. Students will be able to study spatial relationships between topography, earthquakes, and volcanoes. The location of mountains, ocean trenches, ridges, and coastlines are all keys to understanding Earth's dynamic processes. The topographic data set is a compilation of three data sets from the USGS, NOAA, and Smith and Sandwell 1997. Its resolution is approximately 1 km on land areas and 3 km in oceanic areas.

The plate tectonic activities enable students to combine information from the seismicity, topography and volcanism data sets. Each of these features is an expression of plate tectonic processes--the mountains that arise from continental collisions, the earthquakes that define plate boundaries, and the volcanism that represents the recycling of the Earth's lithosphere. Students will explore the relationships between these different features and draw conclusions about the nature of plate tectonic processes.

These tools access the topography data set, allowing students to vary sea level. Sea level change is an important component in understanding ice age geography, as well as the potential hazards of global warming. Students can drain the oceans, flood the continents, or examine the effects of more modest variations in sea level.

 

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