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

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.

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 Oceanography is a textbook appropriate to an introductory-level university course in oceanography. The book covers the fundamental geological, chemical, physical and biological processes in the ocean, with an emphasis on the North Atlantic region.

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.

Physical Geology is a comprehensive introductory text on the physical aspects of geology, including rocks and minerals, plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanoes, glaciation, groundwater, streams, coasts, mass wasting, climate change, planetary geology and much more. It has a strong emphasis on examples from western Canada, especially British Columbia, and also includes a chapter devoted to the geological history of western Canada. The book is a collaboration of faculty from Earth Science departments at Universities and Colleges across British Columbia and elsewhere.

In this course we will explore topics from disciplines within the solid Earth sciences. In each lesson, we'll also touch on some ways the topic links to other scientific disciplines. Each unit is designed to present both the cutting-edge science as well as the background a secondary-school student (or her teacher) would need to place the research in context. Gaining an appreciation of how scientists choose the subjects they study is as fundamental to Earth science as the discovery of the facts themselves. You will learn appropriate state-of-the-art scientific content relevant to each topic by performing basic data analysis using publicly available data so that you will be able to use the data and lessons in any courses you teach.

This is an open-access lab manual for a historical geology lab focused on student observations. We have uploaded this book to Lulu Press so that you may have them print a copy for you. The cost is $19.67 plus shipping. We believe in free access to educational materials, therefore we collect no revenue from Lulu. The price you pay is simply the cost Lulu charges to print the materials for you. You can also download a printable PDF version to print on your own.

The study of Environmental Geology encompasses geologic hazards, natural resources, topical issues of concern to society (such as climate change), and provides sound advice about how humanity can live responsibly and sustainably on Earth. This web collection will help undergraduate faculty and students apply new approaches to teaching and learning environmental geology, including use of tested pedagogical methods and strategies and use of emerging scientific advances (e.g. use of models, datasets and visualizations including Google Earth). By integrating these emerging techniques into the classroom, students will be able to benefit from new developments in this exciting field.

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.

Using the virtual microscope, students will zoom, pan, and rotate specimens in variable light conditions, helping to develop their classification and identification skills without need for high cost microscopes and thin section preparation facilities. The virtual microscope may be used as a complete collection or reused and repurposed individually, since each specimen will have a unique URL. The intention is to engage and excite students in Earth science using rocks of the British Isles held in key collections, and aid teaching of mineral and rock identification skills in HE institutions and schools. We plan to explore continued expansion of the initial collection by offering a digitisation service to HE institutions and industry.