This 12-minute video lesson looks at the structure of the earth. The discussion includes the crust, mantle, core, lithosphere, asthenosphere, mesosphere, outer core, and inner core. [Cosmology and Astronomy playlist: Lesson 50 of 85]

This 6-minute video lesson explains how we know about the Earth's core. It shows how S-wave shadow and P-wave detection patterns give us information about the core. [Cosmology and Astronomy playlist: Lesson 55 of 85]

This 10-minute video lesson covers the structure of the Earth: The crust, mantle, and core. [Cosmology and Astronomy playlist: Lesson 44 of 85]

Rapid changes at Earth's surface, largely in response to human activity, have led to the realization that fundamental questions remain to be answered regarding the natural functioning of the Critical Zone, the thin veneer at Earth's surface where the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere interact. EARTH 530 will introduce you to the basics necessary for understanding Earth surface processes in the Critical Zone through an integration of various scientific disciplines. Those who successfully complete EARTH 530 will be able to apply their knowledge of fundamental concepts of Earth surface processes to understanding outstanding fundamental questions in Critical Zone science and how their lives are intimately linked to Critical Zone health.

Our planet is becoming hot. In fact, Earth may be warming faster than ever before. This warming will challenge society throughout the 21st century. How do we cope with rising seas? How will we prepare for more intense hurricanes? How will we adapt to debilitating droughts and heat waves? Scientists are striving to improve predictions of how the environment will change and how it will impact humans. Earth in the Future: Predicting Climate Change and Its Impacts Over the Next Century is designed to provide the state of the art of climate science, the impact of warming on humans, as well as ways we can adapt. Every student will understand the challenges and opportunities of living in the 21st century.

Every moment of your life will be from the perspective of a single planet—Planet Earth. You were born here and you will die here. This textbook is a guide to your home, to your place in the universe. By taking this course, you will learn about your home planet: how it works and how we know it works this way. This course is a user's manual for planet Earth, with direct recommendations for future generations, such as yourself, to maintain its health and natural wonders. As an astute student, you will be introduced to the theoretical principles of science and of how to defend yourself from the spread of ignorance. You will learn about Earth’s dimensions and motions, as well as how to navigate its surface. You will learn how energy originates from the closest star (the Sun), its Moon, and other sources of energy in the Earth’s active core and how this energy can be used and stored. You will learn basic scientific principles of matter, the makeup of substances that form the field of chemistry. You will examine the planet’s atmosphere, the air that you are breathing as you read this, and how that air is slowly changing. You will explore the vast abundance of Earth’s water, covering the planet in enormous oceans, abundant lakes, and rivers, as well as frozen water locked within snow and ice. You will learn how to predict wind and storms and how climates shift. You will lead your own exploration of the solid interior of the Earth, the composition of mountains, rocks, and dirt. You will learn about life, the most unique feature of the planet. You will explore theories of how life arose and how it has evolved and changed over time, learning that you are of Earth and the story of your own origin on this planet. You will undertake an examination of the great biomes of jungles, forests, and deserts and the life that exists within them. You will survey the important field of biology as you learn about life and its interactions with the planet. In the end, you will come to face the ominous future of your own planet, of the changes that are now occurring. Your planet is not the same as your ancestors, nor grandparents, nor your parents at your age—Earth today is quickly being altered, and you will need to adapt to this change. This course will teach you how to prepare for this change and how to protect the planet from further alteration to the point that it becomes lifeless. This class will be challenging, but with enough dedication and commitment, you will succeed in learning the material. You will cherish the knowledge presented in this class for the rest of your life.

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Intended Audience of This Textbook
3. Purpose of Writing an Open Text and What That Means
4. About the Author
5. About this textbook
6. Digging Deeper
7. Vocabulary and Glossary of Terms
8. Table of Contents
8.1 Section 1: EARTH’S SIZE, SHAPE, AND MOTION IN SPACE
8.2 Section 2: EARTH’S ENERGY
8.3 Section 3: EARTH’S MATTER
8.4 Section 4: EARTH’S ATMOSPHERE
8.5 Section 5: EARTH’S WATER
8.6 Section 6: EARTH’S SOLID INTERIOR
8.7 Section 7: EARTH’S LIFE
8.8 Section 8: EARTH’S HUMANS AND FUTURE

The syllabus for GEOL 300: Introduction to Petrology, taught at James Madison University by Dr. Elizabeth Johnson. 

The syllabus for GEOL 390: Laboratory Techniques in Geology, taught at James Madison University by Dr. Elizabeth Johnson and Dr. Steve J. Baedke.

This manual is about structures that occur within the Earth’s crust. Structures are the features that allow geologists to figure out how parts of the Earth have changed position, orientation, size and shape over time. This work requires careful observation and measurements of features at the surface of the Earth, and deductions about what’s below the surface. The practical skills you will learn in this course form the foundation for much of what is known about the history of the Earth, and are important tools for exploring the subsurface. They are essential for Earth scientists of all kinds.

The course that this document supports is about doing structural geology. It’s not possible to be a good geologist (or to pass the course) just by learning facts. You have to be able to solve problems. Do your lab work conscientiously and get as much as possible done during lab sessions when instructors are available to help you.

This manual consists of both readings and lab exercises, which alternate through the text. The readings are designed to be read and understood outside the lab sessions, whereas the labs contain specific instructions and questions to be completed. Before each lab, be sure you have covered the readings that come immediately before it.

The online geology lab for community college students was developed by Dr. Rondi Davies, a faculty member at Queensborough Community College, City University New York, during two years of forced online synchronous learning brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. This open educational resource collects many of Dr. Davies’ favorite open-access materials and supplements them with her own work within a single, cohesive laboratory manual intended for two-year, non-major college students from the New York area.

Dr. Davies wanted to develop labs that were fun, engaging, and that excited students about the subject, were relevant to their lives, helped them to grow as scientists, and even opened their minds to the possibility of a career in STEM and the geosciences. Strategies adopted to achieve these goals include collecting and interpreting data to simulate the scientific process and develop student confidence and self-efficacy, sketching, role-playing as a scientist, and reasoning by analogy to help students feel appreciated and valued.

To enhance relevance and meaning-making, the labs are grounded in the geologic history of New York. Each lab is structured to meet students at their level of knowledge and build on what they know. They follow a 5E instructional approach (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate; Bybee et al., 2006), which is based in educational theory about how students learn and fosters conceptual change. The labs also use anchoring phenomena and modeling to engage students and show their learning.

Each of the twelve labs was designed to be covered in a three-hour class within a 15-week semester. The introductory lab is about observation and interpretation and how the process of science is much like solving a mystery. Mineral resources, plate tectonics, and igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks provide much of the foundational material. This is followed by more exploratory labs on earthquakes, the glacial and geological history of New York, and climate change. The final lab, an in-person or online field trip guide to the Hall of Planet Earth at the American Museum of Natural History, draws on all the topics covered in previous labs.

Each lab is accompanied by a Teacher’s Guide and an online answer sheet (formatted for the Blackboard learning management system). A multiple-choice format is used for many questions, making the labs easy to grade.

The materials were developed, tested, and refined over two years of synchronous remote learning between 2019 and 2021. Although developed for online learning, they can easily be utilized for in-person classes.

Geoscience: the Earth and its Resources is a series of lecture videos with downloadable slides and video transcripts. The lectures explore the earth's interior and the processes forming mountains and sedimentary basins; how the sediments are formed, transported, deposited and deformed; and the behavior of petroleum and water resources. The course focuses on key fundamental processes, exploring their nature and quantitative interactions, and how this acquired knowledge is used to predict the nature and behavior of the Earth subsurface.

Students will learn about the basics of plate tectonics; processes that control the formation of mountains and sedimentary basins; how sediments are formed, transported and deposited; how rocks are deformed, and how knowledge of deformation increases the reliability of subsurface predictions; petroleum geology; and water geology.

Lecture subjects:
1. The rocks, the earth and plate tectonics
2. The lithosphere: horizontal deformations, upward and downward vertical movements, and mountains and sedimentary basins
3. Climate, sediment production, and deposition in the continental domain
4. Sediments in the marine domain
5. Hydrocarbon geology
6. Hydrogeology

Geology can roughly be divided into physical geology, which studies the materials of the Earth and the processes operating in it, and historical geology, which aims at a reconstruction of the history of the Earth. Historical geology requires some knowledge of physical geology for its elucidation. (Imagine, by way of analogy, forensic scientists diagnosing cause of death as a gunshot wound, which is a historical question. It would obviously be necessary for them to know something about the behavior of guns, which would be a physical question.) However, the aim of historical geology is to understand the past, and knowledge of physical geology is merely an adjunct to this aim.

Historical Geology is a free online textbook for Historical Geology courses. It includes the following chapters, as well as a series of case studies, virtual field experiences, tools of the trade, and virtual sample sets.

Chapters:
What is Historical Geology?
A Brief History of Earth
Earth as a System
Earth Materials – The Rock-Forming Minerals
Earth Materials – Rocks
Plate Tectonics
Geologic time
Evolution Part I: The Theory
Taphonomy: The Science of Death and Decay
Innovations of Life Through Time: Life Finds a Way
Stratigraphy – The Pages of Earth’s Past
Using sedimentary structures to interpret ancient environments
Facies
Paleoclimatology

Introduction to Earth Science is a 530+ page open textbook designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to Earth Science that can be freely accessed online, read offline, printed, or purchased as a print-on-demand book. It is intended for a typical 1000-level university introductory course in the Geosciences, although its contents could be applied to many other related courses.

This text includes various important features designed to enhance the student learning experience in introductory Earth Science courses. These include a multitude of high-quality figures and images within each chapter that help to clarify key concepts and are optimized for viewing online. Self-test assessment questions are embedded in each online chapter that help students focus their learning. QR codes are provided for each assessment to allow students using print or PDF versions to easily access the quiz from an internet-capable device of their choice.

Adapted from openly-licensed works in geoscience, the sequence of the book differs from mainstream commercial texts in that it has been arranged to present elementary or foundational knowledge regarding rocks and minerals prior to discussion of more complex topics in Earth Science. Unlike prominent commercial texts for Earth Science, this book dedicates an individual chapter to each of the three major rock types, the processes of mass wasting, geological time, Earth history, and the origin of the universe and our solar system. Book content has been further customized to match the Pathways General Education Curriculum at Virginia Tech with a focus on Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) for Pathways Concept 4, Reasoning in the Natural Sciences.

Are you a professor reviewing or adopting this book for a course?
Instructors adopting or reviewing this text are encouraged to record their use on this form: https://bit.ly/interest_intro_earth_science. This helps the book's sponsors to understand this open textbook's impact.

How to Access the Book
This text is available in multiple formats including PDF, a low-resolution PDF which is faster to download, and ePub [coming mid 2023]. These are linked on the left side of your screen. The book is also available in HTML/Pressbooks at https://pressbooks.lib.vt.edu/introearthscience. Softcover print versions with color interior are available at the manufacturer’s lowest price at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1957213361. The main landing page for this book is https://doi.org/10.21061/introearthscience.

PDF: ISBN 978-1-957213-34-7
HTML/Pressbooks: ISBN 978-1-957213-33-0
https://pressbooks.lib.vt.edu/introearthscience
Print: ISBN 978-1-957213-36-1 (order a print version)
ePub: ISBN 978-1-957213-35-4 [expected mid 2023]

Table of Contents
1. Understanding Science
2. Plate Tectonics
3. Minerals
4. Igneous Processes and Volcanoes
5. Weathering, Erosion, and Sedimentary Rocks
6. Metamorphic Rocks
7. Geologic Time
8. Earth History
9. Crustal Deformation and Earthquakes
10. Mass Wasting
11. Water
12. Coastlines
13. Deserts
14. Glaciers
15. Global Climate Change
16. Energy and Mineral Resources
17. Origin of the Universe and Our Solar System

Introduction to Earth Science is designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to Earth Science that can be freely accessed online, read offline, printed, or purchased as a print-on-demand book. It is intended for a typical 1000-level university introductory course in the Geosciences.

This open textbook includes various features designed to enhance the student learning experience. These include a multitude of high-quality figures and images within each chapter that help to clarify key concepts and are optimized for viewing online. Self-test assessment questions are embedded in each online chapter that help students focus their learning.

Are you a professor reviewing or adopting this book for a course? Instructors adopting or reviewing this text are encouraged to record their use on this form: https://bit.ly/interest_intro_earth_science This helps the book's sponsors to understand this open textbook's impact.

PDF and ePub (coming soon) versions, and a link to order a print version are available at https://doi.org/10.21061/introearthscience .

Table of Contents
Understanding Science
Plate Tectonics
Minerals
Igneous Processes and Volcanoes
Weathering, Erosion, and Sedimentary Rocks
Metamorphic Rocks
Geologic Time
Earth History
Crustal Deformation and Earthquakes
Mass Wasting
Water
Coastlines
Deserts
Glaciers
Global Climate Change
Energy and Mineral Resources
Origin of the Universe and Our Solar System

Learn about igneous and metamorphic rocks (and how to analyze them), the fun way! Students learn concepts and practice knowledge by conducting inquiries guided with examples based on videos and interactive diagrams.

Geology is a core science, along with physics, chemistry, and biology. It uses rigorous methods of inquiry that illuminate the history of the earth and its present-day geological activity. Geology allows us to discover how earth‰ŰŞs history and activity determine the state of the planet and its life forms. The study of geology also shows us how human behavior affects the earth. Topics we will cover include plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanoes, rocks, minerals, geologic time, glaciers, rivers, geologic structures, layers of the earth, and reading maps. This course includes laboratory work and lab credit.Login: guest_oclPassword: ocl

This lab manual is the product of the work of many people dedicated to teaching Earth science, and to making sure that students have high quality and affordable materials with which to learn. The contents are adapted from and build upon projects by three other groups (listed below), and incorporate countless other resources offered free of charge for just this purpose.

This version of the lab manual has been redesigned to address the challenges of learning online by modifying activities to be more learn-from-home friendly, building in interactive activities so there’s more to do than just reading, and taking into consideration that not everyone has the same internet access or technology to work with. It is nevertheless still a work in progress, and all three of these issues will be addressed in more detail in subsequent revisions.

This lab manual was developed to support the Earth Science 111 lab course at UBC’s Okanagan campus, and does incorporate activities that utilize a rock and mineral sample kit that is distributed to students. The relevant labs include a list of what rocks and minerals are present in the kit.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Minerals
Chapter 2. Plate Tectonics
Chapter 3. Igneous Rocks
Chapter 4. Sedimentary Rocks
Chapter 5. Metamorphic Rocks
Chapter 6. Topographic Maps
Chapter 7. Geological Structures Part A: Relative Age and Orientation of Geologic Layers
Chapter 8. Geological Structures, Part B: Folds, Faults, and Unconformities

This textbook is a comprehensive lab manual for the core curriculum Introductory Geosciences classes with both informational content and laboratory exercises. Topics include basic laws and theories in Geology, the Earth's interior and plate tectonics, water and climate change, igneous rocks and volcanoes, and earthquakes.