Preprints  

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.

Field trips, despite their significance in students’ education, cannot be performed under the present COVID-19 pandemic. We evaluated virtual field trips, as an alternative of in situ field work and as a means of preparation for “live” field trips, considering students’ views. They are useful for geoscience students, and a good alternative during restriction periods; although they can't substitute real field trips, they can be a valuable additional tool when preparing for a live field trip.

Many countries can get hit by different hazards, such as earthquakes and floods. Generally, measures and policies are aimed at decreasing the potential damages of one particular hazard type despite their potential of having unwanted effects on other hazard types. We designed a serious game that helps professionals to improve their understanding of these potential negative effects of measures and policies that reduce the impacts of disasters across many different hazard types.

In order to communicate the field-rich, complex concepts of karst geomorphology and hydrogeology to people who may not be able to access in-person field experiences, two virtual learning resources were created. Both karst activities, introductory and advanced, are available online in the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) Online Field Experiences repository. They and other activities from that SERC repository were incorporated into Virtual Capstone Pathways for senior undergrad students.

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.

The study aims to address a proposed disconnect between science and the public. In this case, marine meteorological information and the users of these data. Here, the focus is not only on the perceptions, usability and uptake of extreme event forecasts but rather focused on general, everyday situations. A survey was conducted in two southern hemisphere countries, South Africa and New Zealand and subgroups within the communities (recreational and commercial users) were identified and elucidated.

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.