2. Tectonics & Seamounts
  3. Instructor's Guide

Exploring Tectonics & Seamounts with OOI Data
Instructor's Guide

Summary

Juan de Fuca Plate Boundary

This collection consists of 4 sets of activities, each having 2-3 Data Exploration activities, to be used during the Exploration or Application phases of the Learning Cycle. The collection was developed to assist with students understanding of various concepts covered in Chapter 2. Plate Tectonics & the Ocean Floor (12th Ed) including: divergent boundary features, transform boundary features, and seamounts. Ideas are provided to assist with students accessing their prior knowledge before beginning an activity (Invitation), developing an understanding of the concept (Concept Invention), and thinking about what understanding about plate tectonics and the ocean floor they have gained through an activity (Reflection).

Learning Goals

After engaging with the Data Exploration(s) a student will be able to:

Context for Use

These Data Explorations are appropriate to use in an Introduction to Oceanography course that is learning about geology, specifically features of divergent and transform plate boundaries and seamounts over time. The ability to interpret and use data is integral to oceanography.

Teaching Notes

The Data Exploration activities require access to an internet-ready computer or tablet. Ideally each student or pairs of students would have a computer or tablet to use to engage with the activity.

Note, the Data Explorations use authentic raw data. Many of the datasets have been downsampled for simplicity and to ensure that the interactives load quickly in your browser. However, this means that many of the datasets retain their natural variability and some sampling side-effects. The goal of these activities is for students to analyze authentic data, not smooth averages. Effort has been taken to maintain as much of the data and to keep the variation of the data as true as possible, but make the activity user-friendly and browser-friendly. There has been no resampling or selective reduction of the data. Therefore, the amount of data over time varies within the interactive based on the original data and similarly, there are time periods when some data are missing.

There are 4 different sets of Data Exploration activities to choose from within this collection:

Plate Boundary Features

To help students understand features of transform and divergent plate boundaries...

  • Invitation: You could...
    • Engage your students in a discussion about what they know about plate boundaries, or
    • Have students create a concept map of features of plate boundaries, or
    • Something else that you are doing already
  • Exploration: You could...
    • Use the Plate Boundary Features - Exploration activity to use earthquake data (magnitude) from 2010 to 2017 to try to identify any patterns or features along plate boundaries, or
    • Do a hands-on activity about features of plate boundaries, or
    • Something else that you are doing already
  • Concept Invention: You could...
    • Share XX video about plate boundary features, or
    • Engage in a discussion about different features at different plate boundaries, or
    • Something else that you are doing already
  • Application: You could...
  • Reflection: You could...
    • Engage your students in a discussion about what they learned about plate boundaries and what questions they still have, or
    • Have students create a, or revise a previous, concept map of features of plate boundaries, or
    • Something else that you are doing already

Geologic Features of a Seamount

To help students understand how seamounts are actively changing at mid-ocean ridges...

  • Invitation: You could...
  • Exploration: You could...
    • Use the Geologic Features of a Seamount - Exploration activity to look at seafloor depth and tilt (x/y-axis) data from 6 months before and after the April 2015 event to look for changes and patterns in the data to see if they can identify anything unusual, or
    • Something else that you are doing already
  • Concept Invention: You could...
  • Application: You could...
    • Use the Geologic Features of a Seamount - Event-in-Detail Application activity to look at range of variables (seafloor depth, tilt x/y-axis, and lidar) from 3 days before and after the April 24, 2015 diking-eruption event at Axial Seamount to interpret data to track a diking-eruption event, or
    • Use the Geologic Features of a Seamount - Impact of Event Application activity to look at range of variables (seafloor depth, tilt x/y-axis, water temperature) from 6 months before and after the diking-eruption event in April 2015 to see how you can track an diking-eruption event and compare it to the baseline, or
    • Something else that you are doing already
  • Reflection: You could...
    • Engage your students in a discussion about what they learned about mid-ocean ridge seamounts and what questions they still have, or
    • Something else that you are doing already

Seamount Diking-Eruption Event Science

To help students understand how scientists use data and knowledge of processes at mid-ocean ridges to make predictions of future seismic and eruption events...

  • Invitation: You could...
    • Engage your students in a discussion about what they know about activity of eruptions and growth at mid-ocean ridges, or
    • Watch the Earth-Oceans Interaction Program Axial 2015 Video Blog #2 Monitoring to learn more about why and how scientists are monitoring the active volcano of the Axial Seamount, or
    • Something else that you are doing already
  • Exploration: You could...
  • Concept Invention: You could...
    • Engage in a discussion about what goes in to predicting when eruption events may occur along mid-ocean ridges, including basic information like:
      • Between eruptions some volcanoes inflate somewhat like a balloon, except with magma instead of air, and during inflation the ground elevation gradually rises.
      • During eruptions these volcanoes quickly deflate and the ground elevation suddenly subsides. Eruptions occur when the subsurface magma reservoir can no longer hold the increasing pressure from inflation and magma escapes to the surface to erupt, lowering the pressure in the reservoir.
      • In special cases, this inflation/deflation process can be fairly repeatable and measurements of the ground uplift and subsidence can be used to forecast eruptions. However, this is not always the case; often there are other factors that influence the pressure in a magma reservoir and when a volcano with erupt.
      • At submarine volcanoes, vertical movements of the seafloor can be measured with very precise pressure sensors (after ocean tides and instrument drift are removed). Decreasing pressure indicates uplift; increasing pressure shows subsidence., or
    • Something else that you are doing already
  • Application: You could...
    • Use the Seamount Diking-Eruption Event Science - Application activity to use historical patterns of tracking diking-eruption events to make a prediction of the next event following the 2015 diking-eruption event, or
    • Have the students calculate inflation (uplift) rates from the data (either visually or mathematically). For example, there is a four-fold change in rates between pre-2011 and post-2011 data, evident from the different slopes on the plot. Calculating rates for different time periods can lead to questions like:
      • Has the rate of inflation changed with time, and if so when?
      • What does a change of inflation imply about the rate of magma supply? [ANSWER: inflation is caused by magma being supplied to the subsurface reservoir. If the rate of inflation increases it's because the rate of magma supply has increased.]
      • What implications does that have for forecasting eruptions? [ANSWER: if the pattern of inflation/deflation stays repeatable and the threshold at which eruptions are triggered stays about the same, then the time between eruptions will decrease - in other words, the next eruption will come sooner after an increase in the rate of inflation.]
    • Something else that you are doing already
  • Reflection: You could...
    • Engage your students in a discussion about what they learned about predicting eruption events and what questions they still have, or
    • Something else that you are doing already

Seismic Features at a Seamount

To help students understand features of seamounts...

  • Invitation: You could...
    • Engage your students in a discussion about what they know about seismic activity at mid-ocean ridges, or
    • Something else that you are doing already
  • Exploration: You could...
    • Use the Seamount Features - Exploration activity to use earthquake data (magnitude) from February to June 2015 to look for patterns in the data to see if they can identify any seismic features at a seamount, or
    • Something else that you are doing already
  • Concept Invention: You could...
    • Engage in a discussion about different features at mid-ocean ridges and what seismic activity can help us understand about mid-ocean ridges, or
    • Something else that you are doing already
  • Application: You could...
    • Use the Seamount Features - Application activity to interpret earthquake data (magnitude) from April 23, 04:00 UTC to April 25, 04:00 UTC 2015 to interpret the location and timing of the diking-eruptive event at Axial Seamount on April 24, 2015, or
    • Something else that you are doing already
  • Reflection: You could...
    • Engage your students in a discussion about what they learned about seismic activity at mid-ocean ridges and what questions they still have, or
    • Something else that you are doing already

Subject / Topics

Grade Level

Undergraduate students in Introduction to Oceanography courses (mostly non-majors)

Data Scope

Our scope in exploring ways to use professionally-collected data in our teaching:

Quantitative Skills

For more information on using quantitative skills in higher ed, please see: Teaching Quantitative Skills in the Geosciences