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

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.

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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

This textbook was designed especially for College of the Canyons students, as a resource to instill the knowledge and adventure that the discipline of geography holds for so many of us. The following units will cover a wide array of topics such as: Earth’s grid system, rivers, oceans, deserts, basic geology, and cartography.

Table of Contents
Unit 1: Introduction to Geography as a Discipline
Unit 2: Earth’s Place within the Cosmos
Unit 3: Introduction to Geology & Geologic Time
Unit 4: Mapping Earth’s Surface
Unit 5: Earth-Sun Relationships: Reasons for the Seasons
Unit 6: Earth’s Atmosphere
Unit 7: Elements of Weather & Climate
Unit 8: Basic Mineral Development
Unit 9: Igneous Rocks
Unit 10: Sedimentary Rocks
Unit 11: Metamorphism & Metamorphic Rocks
Unit 12: Weathering & Soils
Unit 13: Earths Dynamic Surface: Plate Tectonics
Unit 14: Earths Dynamic Surface: Tectonics Force
Unit 15: Earths Dynamic Surface: Volcanoes
Unit 16: Shaped by Coastal Processes
Unit 17: Shaped by Rivers & Running Water
Unit 18: Shaped by Wind as a Geomorphic Agent
Unit 19: Shaped by Glaciers

Teach the Earth is a portal to thousands of open educational resources from dozens of earth education websites. Teach the Earth supports teaching and learning about the Earth by providing online resources for educators in the geosciences and related fields. Resources include classroom activities, course descriptions and syllabi, information about pedagogical strategies, topical collections, and more.

Topics include atmospheric science, biogeoscience, climate change, earthquakes, ecology, energy, environmental geology, environmental science, geochemistry, geodesy, geomorphology, geophysics, GIS/remote sensing, hydrology/hydrogeology, minerals and mineralogy, oceanography, paleontology, petrology, planetary science, plate tectonics, rock cycle, sedimentary geology, soil, structural geology, water, and volcanoes.