Framework Development

Building on a prior reports, surveys, and workshops, this NSF-funded GER Framework project engaged ~200 geoscience educators and researchers through a sequenced series of virtual and face-to-face events to share ideas, gain feedback, and create and revise priority research questions, or Grand Challenges , that span 10 geoscience education research themes. For each theme, several Grand Challenges and recommended strategies have been proposed by the community. This framework development chapter describes the underlying project goal, its objectives, and its vision. It also outlines the processes used to develop the Framework and the intended scope and audience

Linked Conservation Data: Driving Change in Documentation Practice

Documentation is a core task for conservators, allowing evaluation of past choices and providing an evidence base for reasoned decision-making for future practice. However, much of the documentation created is not shared with other conservators or broader audiences. During the Linked Conservation Data (LCD) project, we explored the potential of documentation practices known as Linked Data for conservation, inspired by practices in other domains including medical science and biology, as well as various openGLAM initiatives. As part of the project, we developed: guidelines for harmonising disparate conservation terminologies; proposals for encoding different types of conservation data; a template for articulating policy in relation to conservation data; and a Linked Data pilot demonstrating the value of the approach. This work encourages institutions to begin sharing conservation records routinely, for use and re-use by other conservators. Adopting such a practice at large scale will provide an invaluable resource of conservation-related information that can be used for decision-making and enable data analysis and statistical work with large samples in conservation. We present conclusions and lessons learned from the LCD pilot, including the: importance of structured records; role of documentation of conservation vocabularies; foundational work still needed for sharing records as Linked Data; and practicalities of implementing a Linked Data system for sharing conservation records. We conclude by outlining the role and responsibilities that professional bodies need to adopt towards this effort

Microfeatures of Modern Sea-ice-rafted Sediment and Implications for Paleo-sea-ice Reconstructions

Distinguishing sea-ice-rafted debris (SIRD) from iceberg-rafted debris is crucial to an interpretation of ice-rafting history; however, there are few paleo-sea-ice proxies. This study characterizes quartz grain microfeatures of modern SIRD from the Arctic Ocean, and compares these results with microfeatures from representative glacial deposits to potentially differentiate SIRD from ice-rafted sediments which have been recently subjected to glacial processes. This allows us to evaluate the use of grain microfeatures as a paleo-sea-ice proxy. SIRD grains were largely subrounded, with medium relief, pervasive silica dissolution and a high abundance of breakage blocks and microlayering. The glacial grains were more angular, with lower relief and higher abundances of fractures and striations/gouges. Discriminate analysis shows a distinct difference between SIRD and glacial grains, with ˂7% of the SIRD grains containing typical glacial microtextures, suggesting this method is a useful means of inferring paleo-sea-ice presence in the marine record. We propose that differences in microfeatures of SIRD and glacial ice-rafted debris reflect differences in sediment transport and weathering histories. Sediment transported to a coastal setting and later rafted by sea ice would be subject to increased chemical weathering, whereas glaciers that calve icebergs would bypass the coastal marine environment, thus preserving their glacial signature

Closing the Loop: Communication for Transformation of Geoscience Teaching Practice

The goal of the GER Framework is to improve teaching and learning about the Earth, by focusing the power of Geoscience Education Research (GER) on the set of ambitious, high-priority, community-endorsed grand challenges outlined in this document. This goal has an underlying assumption - that research results are effectively shared with educators and are used to reform teaching practice; consistent with the feedback loop on the strength of evidence pyramid. Closing this loop is intimately tied to research theme on Institutional Change and Professional Development. However, closing this loop has a broader scope as well. Raising awareness of research results, and then applying the research results, will require engaged, respectful dialogue as well as strategic communication to extend the community of reflective practitioners and gain needed support from administrators. This chapter expands on strategies for communication

Synthesis: Discussion and Implications

This project was a formidable undertaking, necessary to position our community to achieve an important goal: to improve undergraduate teaching and learning about the Earth by focusing the power of Geoscience Education Research (GER) on a set of ambitious, high-priority, community-endorsed grand challenges. Working groups, through examination of the literature and with the aid of reviewers\u27 insights, identified two to five grand challenges for each of the ten research themes. The thematic grand challenges illuminate interconnected paths for future GER. Collective this creates a guiding framework to harness the power of GER to improve undergraduate teaching and learning about the Earth. While the individual theme chapters lay out the rationales for those large-scale grand challenge research questions and offer strategies for addressing them, here the purpose is to summarize and synthesize - to highlight thematic research priorities and synergies that may be avenues for research efficiencies and powerful outcomes

Age and anatomy of the Gongga Shan batholith, eastern Tibetan Plateau, and its relationship to the active Xianshui-he fault

The Gongga Shan batholith of eastern Tibet, previously documented as a ca. 32–12.8 Ma granite pluton, shows some of the youngest U-Pb granite crystallization ages recorded from the Tibetan Plateau, with major implications for the tectonothermal history of the region. Field observations indicate that the batholith is composite; some localities show at least seven crosscutting phases of granitoids that range in composition from diorite to leucocratic monzogranite. In this study we present U-Pb ages of zircon and allanite dated by laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry on seven samples, to further investigate the chronology of the batholith. The age data constrain two striking tectonic-plutonic events: a complex Triassic–Jurassic (ca. 215–159 Ma) record of biotite-hornblende granodiorite, K-feldspar megacrystic granite and leucogranitic plutonism, and a Miocene (ca. 14–5 Ma) record of monzonite-leucogranite emplacement. The former age range is attributed to widespread Indosinian tectonism, related to Paleo-Tethyan subduction zone magmatism along the western Yangtze block of south China. The younger component may be related to localized partial melting (muscovite dehydration) of thickened Triassic flysch-type sediments in the Songpan-Ganze terrane, and are among the youngest crustal melt granites exposed on the Tibetan Plateau. Zircon and allanite ages reflect multiple crustal remelting events; the youngest, ca. 5 Ma, resulted in dissolution and crystallization of zircons and growth and/or resetting of allanites. The young garnet, muscovite, and biotite leucogranites occur mainly in the central part of the batholith and adjacent to the eastern margin of the batholith at Kangding, where they are cut by the left-lateral Xianshui-he fault. The Xianshui-he fault is the most seismically active strike-slip fault in Tibet and is thought to record the eastward extrusion of the central part of the Tibetan Plateau. The fault obliquely cuts all granites of the Gongga Shan massif and has a major transpressional component in the Kangding-Moxi region. The course of the Xianshui Jiang river is offset by ∼62 km along the Xianshui-he fault and in the Kangding area granites as young as ca. 5 Ma are cut by the fault. Our new geochronological data show that only a part of the Gongga Shan granite batholith is composed of young (Miocene) melt, and we surmise that as most of eastern Tibet is composed of Precambrian–Triassic Indosinian rocks, there is no geological evidence to support regional Cenozoic internal thickening or metamorphism and no evidence for eastward-directed lower crustal flow away from Tibet. We suggest that underthrusting of Indian lower crust north as far as the Xianshui-he fault resulted in Cenozoic uplift of the eastern plateau

Learning from the COVID-19 Pandemic: How Faculty Experiences Can Prepare Us for Future System-Wide Disruption

The COVID-19 pandemic provided education researchers with a natural experiment: an opportunity to investigate the impacts of a system-wide, involuntary move to online teaching and to assess the characteristics of individuals who adapted more readily. To capture the impacts in real time, our team recruited college-level geoscience instructors through the National Association of Geoscience Teachers (NAGT) and American Geophysical Union (AGU) communities to participate in our study in the spring of 2020. Each weekday for three successive weeks, participants (n = 262) were asked to rate their experienced disruption in four domains: teaching, research, ability to communicate with their professional community, and work-life balance. The rating system (a scale of 1–5, with 5 as severely disrupted) was designed to assess (a) where support needs were greatest, (b) how those needs evolved over time, and (c) respondents’ capacity to adapt. In addition, participants were asked two open-response questions, designed to provide preliminary insights into how individuals were adapting—what was their most important task that day and what was their greatest insight from the previous day. Participants also provided information on their institution type, position, discipline, gender, race, dependents, and online teaching experience (see supplemental material)

Plio-Pleistocene trends in ice rafted debris on the Lomonosov Ridge

Although more than 700 sediment cores exist from the Arctic Ocean, the Plio-Pleistocene evolution of the basin and its marginal seas remains virtually unknown. This is largely due the shallow penetration of most of these records, and difficulties associated with deriving chronologies for the recovered material. The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program’s (IODP) Expedition 302 (Arctic Coring Expedition, ACEX) recovered 197 m of Neogene/Quaternary sediment from the circumpolar regions of the Lomonosov Ridge. As detailed analyses of this material emerge, research is beginning to formulate a long-term picture of paleoceanographic changes in the central Arctic Ocean. This paper reviews the ACEX Plio-Pleistocene age model, identifies uncertainties, and addresses ways in which these may be eliminated. Within the established stratigraphic framework, a notable reduction in the abundance of ice rafted debris (IRD) occurs in the early part of the Pleistocene and persists until Marine Isotope Stage 6 (MIS 6). Therefore, while global oceanographic proxies indicate the gradual growth of terrestrial ice-sheets during this time, IRD delivery to the central Arctic Ocean remained comparatively low and stable. Within the resolution of existing data, the Pleistocene reduction in IRD is synchronous with predicted changes in both the inflow of North Atlantic and Pacific waters, which in modern times are known to exert a strong influence on sea ice stability

Dorsoventral Patterning in Hemichordates: Insights into Early Chordate Evolution

We have compared the dorsoventral development of hemichordates and chordates to deduce the organization of their common ancestor, and hence to identify the evolutionary modifications of the chordate body axis after the lineages split. In the hemichordate embryo, genes encoding bone morphogenetic proteins (Bmp) 2/4 and 5/8, as well as several genes for modulators of Bmp activity, are expressed in a thin stripe of ectoderm on one midline, historically called “dorsal.” On the opposite midline, the genes encoding Chordin and Anti-dorsalizing morphogenetic protein (Admp) are expressed. Thus, we find a Bmp-Chordin developmental axis preceding and underlying the anatomical dorsoventral axis of hemichordates, adding to the evidence from Drosophila and chordates that this axis may be at least as ancient as the first bilateral animals. Numerous genes encoding transcription factors and signaling ligands are expressed in the three germ layers of hemichordate embryos in distinct dorsoventral domains, such as pox neuro, pituitary homeobox, distalless, and tbx2/3 on the Bmp side and netrin, mnx, mox, and single-minded on the Chordin-Admp side. When we expose the embryo to excess Bmp protein, or when we deplete endogenous Bmp by small interfering RNA injections, these expression domains expand or contract, reflecting their activation or repression by Bmp, and the embryos develop as dorsalized or ventralized limit forms. Dorsoventral patterning is independent of anterior/posterior patterning, as in Drosophila but not chordates. Unlike both chordates and Drosophila, neural gene expression in hemichordates is not repressed by high Bmp levels, consistent with their development of a diffuse rather than centralized nervous system. We suggest that the common ancestor of hemichordates and chordates did not use its Bmp-Chordin axis to segregate epidermal and neural ectoderm but to pattern many other dorsoventral aspects of the germ layers, including neural cell fates within a diffuse nervous system. Accordingly, centralization was added in the chordate line by neural-epidermal segregation, mediated by the pre-existing Bmp-Chordin axis. Finally, since hemichordates develop the mouth on the non-Bmp side, like arthropods but opposite to chordates, the mouth and Bmp-Chordin axis may have rearranged in the chordate line, one relative to the other

Geoscience Education Perspectives on Integrated, Coordinated, Open, Networked (ICON) Science

Practitioners and researchers in geoscience education embrace collaboration applying ICON (Integrated, Coordinated, Open science, and Networked) principles and approaches ICON principles and approaches have been used to create and share large collections of educational resources, to move forward collective priorities, and to foster peer-learning among educators. These strategies can also support the advancement of coproduction between geoscientists and diverse communities. For this reason, many authors from the geoscience education community have co-created three commentaries on the use and future of ICON in geoscience education. We envision that sharing our expertise with ICON practice will be useful to other geoscience communities seeking to strengthen collaboration. Geoscience education brings substantial expertise in social science research and its application to building individual and collective capacity to address earth sustainability and equity issues at local to global scales The geoscience education community has expanded its own ICON capacity through access to and use of shared resources and research findings, enhancing data sharing and publication, and leadership development. We prioritize continued use of ICON principles to develop effective and inclusive communities that increase equity in geoscience education and beyond, support leadership and full participation of systemically non-dominant groups and enable global discussions and collaborations