Preprints  

We present a Geology of Yosemite Valley virtual field trip (VFT) and companion exercises produced to substitute for physical field experiences. The VFT is created as an Earth project in Google Earth Web, a versatile format that allows access through a web browser. The module's progression from VFT to mapping exercise to geologically-reasoned decision-making results in high quality student work; students find it engaging, enjoyable, and educational.

This paper outlines educational materials appropriate to teach upper-division or graduate-level geoscience students how to produce and interpret high-resolution topography data. These datasets are useful in interpreting river and hillslope processes with implications for flooding and mass wasting. Students can use the training for environmental jobs or research settings.

The news media has been identified as one of the ways weather hazard risk can be communicated. However, hazards become subject to newsworthiness. Here, it is presented that the media focus of Northern Hemisphere Summer 2021 was storms and flooding. This is despite the fact there were also a number of high profile extremes for heat waves, droughts and wildfires.

Climate change is one of the major challenges of our society and therefore we present a climate risk training for tertiary students and practitioners. The training uses a hands-on method and was tested with 5 independent groups in Brazil. We find that the application of a mapping exercise supports learning about climate risk, as well as the development of problem-solving skills. The proposed training enables the teaching of climate risk in stand-alone courses and professional development.

Current science communication initiatives in universities draws from media and journalism to encourage scientists to be competent communicators of their research in order to show the relevance of scientific knwowledge to societal concerns. An alternative but less popular source of inspiration is from marketing and public relations. Here, science communication is reappraised through the lens of three leading marketing paradigms: 'make and sell', 'sense and respind' and 'guide and co-create'.

It is an aspiration to infer flow conditions from bedform morphology (e.g. riverbed ripples) where sedimentary structures preserve the geological past, or in inaccessible environments (e.g. Mars). This study was motivated by the idea of better designing an 'AI' algorithm by using lessons from non-AI (i.e. human) abilities. Survey participants demonstrate that the task is visually possible, but geoscience expertise does not help, so an algorithm might be trained well from the data alone.

Geoscience courses, such as geology and geomorphology, require not only classroom lessons and laboratory exercises, but field trips as well. Here, we performed a virtual navigation on Naxos Isl., Cyclades (Greece) for a series of virtual field trips, which took place during webinars in the framework of Erasmus+ CIVIS. Taking into consideration the feedback from 100 students we evaluate the effectiveness of virtual fieldtrips as an alternative form of education.

In this article, we present authorship guidelines which also include a novel authorship form, along with the documentation of the formulation process for a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary center with more than 250 researchers. Our practical approach promotes fair authorship practices and by focusing on clear, transparent, and timely communication, helps avoid late-stage authorship conflict.

The Strike and Dip (SaD) tool is a desktop virtual reality environment to teach taking strike and dip measurements and compiling geologic maps. SaD replicates real world field mapping by using virtual 3D outcrop models and a geologic compass the user manipulates to take measurements. SaD was implemented in an introductory geology course and students were surveyed about their experience with it. We found that the experience was overall positive and is a viable resource for accessible field trips.

We designed interactive, open-ended video games that simulate field geology to address the learning goals of traditional, in-person exercises for geology students. When these simulations were implemented in college courses, students used virtual versions of standard geology measuring tools to collect data but could also visualize and collect data in new ways, with a jetpack and instantaneous graphing tools. The games were for remote learning, but the tools can also enhance in-person instruction.

In this paper we investigate the number of pages, references and references per page in open access EGU journals. We showed that, while the number of references and number of pages have been constantly increasing in the period 2010–2020, the number of references per page did not change in the same period. Further, all the journals showed similar number of references per page, i.e. ~3.8 references per page.

In this paper we suggest that introductory level geoscience students can learn more about the Earth and the processes that change it through well designed interactive videos and 3-D images than they typically can learn from a field trip or live lecturer, textbook, and hand samples. This is particularly important at this time because many schools and universities are moving away from actual field experiences and there is a common viewpoint that geology is not a "real" science.

Geological (Engineering) Field Methods is a core course at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada where students learn how to investigate the Earth. Typically, this course involves weekly field trips to visit a variety of rock outcrops to learn navigation, observation, and measurement. Remote delivery of this course in fall 2020 due to COVID-19 required a transformation using new virtual, manual, and blended tools. Although largely successful, a return to in-person teaching is recommended.

This paper presents an analysis of public responses to U.S. National Weather Service heat-related Facebook posts for the Phoenix (Arizona) County Warning Area to identify community norms that may present challenges to the effectiveness of heat risk communication. Findings suggest that local audiences tend to view heat as “normal” and the ability to withstand heat as a marker of community identity. Recommendations are provided for harnessing those norms to promote positive behavioral change.

In this editorial we expand upon the brief advice in the first editorial of Geoscience Communication (Illingworth et al., 2018), illustrating what constitutes robust and publishable work for this journal, elucidating its key elements. Our aim is to help geoscience communicators plan a route to publication, and to illustrate how good engagement work that is already being done might be developed into publishable research.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic shut down, we designed a virtual geology field camp based in the video game, Minecraft. Students learned how to map geological features on the surface and in the subsurface using this fun and engaging platform. Students perceptions of the course were positive and they showed improvement on basic geologic skills between a pre- and post-assessment survey. students discussing career pathways, skills, and fostering interpersonal relationships.

We created a virtual field trip (VFT) to Grand Ledge, a regionally important suite of outcrops in Michigan, USA. There is a wide range of sedimentary and stratigraphic features encompassed in this locality, making it ideal for a comprehensive virtual field experience. The VFT undertakes all stages of a field project – students investigate outcrops and samples at multiple scales, and students report successfully learning how to interpret complex sedimentary environments "like a real geologist."

We describe a virtual education module that encompasses many of the basic requirements of an advanced field exercise, including designing data collection strategies, synthesizing field and laboratory data, and communicating the results. Modules like the one shared here can successfully address, or even improve on, some of the key learning objectives that are common to field-based capstone experiences, while also fostering a more accessible and inclusive learning environment for all students.

At UNIS, located at 78° N in Longyearbyen in Arctic Norway, we use digital outcrop models (DOMs) actively in a new course (‘AG222: Integrated Geological Methods: from outcrop to geomodel’) to solve authentic geoscientific challenges. DOMs are shared through the open access Svalbox geoscientific portal, along with 360° imagery, subsurface data and published geoscientific data from Svalbard. Here we share experiences from the AG222 course and Svalbox, both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the spring of 2020, in response to the escalating global coronavirus pandemic, the European Geosciences Union (EGU) moved it's annual General Assembly online in a matter of weeks. This paper explores the feedback provided by participants who attended this experimental conference and identifies four key themes that emerged from analysis of the survey: connection, engagement, environment, and accessibility. The responses raise important questions about the format of future conferences.

GAIA 5.0 presents based on concepts from Plato to Poincaré, the Earth as hypersphere, and as complex living system embedded into a multi-dimensional dynamic space model based on 5-dimensional hyper-Euclidean geometry. It visualizes a coupled atmosphere-ocean dynamics model by using ECMWF reanalysis data sets of the very severe cyclonic storms (Luban & Titli) over the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal (2016). Finally a discrete model for the formation of aerosol is suggested.

We have continued the interdisciplinary study on climate and music and have developed the crosscutting study plans on the climate and cultural understanding education, for promoting the Fundamental ESD Literacy. This review article re-integrates the results of our studies referring to our papers written in Japanese, mainly paying attention to the regional characteristics of the seasonal cycles and the songs/traditional seasonal events around Germany, Northern Europe and Japan.

Everybody experiences weather and has, likely, a grasp on the notion of different climates. There are discussions on how to define climate, since climate is a policy-relevant topic. Here, I try to clarify why the saying Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get is an appropriate definition that, however, depends on the definition of what may be seen as weather.

The measurement of knowledge transfer is considered an important component of the overall performance assessment of research groups. It is, however, not a trivial task, because there is agreement on neither the definition nor on the logical structure of knowledge. In this paper related problems are summarized and approaches to the measurement of knowledge transfer are critically discussed.

A simulation tool has been realized with which the sensitivity of the Earth climate system to human interference can be studied. The tool is intended to offer users of the software, e.g. students in higher education, support in gaining insight into critical aspects of the climate system and thus counteracting common misconceptions with regard to the functioning of this system. The conceptual design of the tool is based on the paradigm learning as experimenting.