Geochemical Analysis of Recent Volcanic Ash Blanketing Barbados and Constraints on Magma Composition (V32E-0112)

Preliminary field and geochemical investigations were conducted on ash samples from Barbados to chemically characterize and decipher magma chemistry associated with a recent volcanic event. A thick plume of volcanic ash from the La Soufriere Volcano in St Vincent, which erupted on April 9, 2021, caused lower visibility due to ash clouds which engulfed the region for some time. Three authors from the research team visited Barbados during the summer subsequent and completed a reconnaissance investigation on recent ashfall. St Vincent is a small volcanic island in the Eastern Caribbean and lies in the southern part of the Lesser Antilles volcanic arc. Six volcanoes along the arc have erupted since 1900. Magmas that have erupted from the Soufrière of St Vincent during the geologic past (Holocene) include primitive arc basalts and andesites. Collected ash samples were analyzed using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), Ultra Trace Aqua Regia and whole rock package – X-ray Fluorescence (XRF). Facilities available through the ALS USA Incorporated (Reno, Nevada), an established geochemistry laboratory known for its research quality output, provided access to retrieve both bulk oxide and trace elements data. To achieve better accuracy, samples were pulverized to 75 microns or less. Analyzed samples fell well within the more evolved andesitic compositions (SiO2 = 53- 56 wt. %). A notable concentration of alumina (18%), CaO (9%), and a general decrease in magnesia and soda (each averaging 3%) seem to suggest differentiation of the investigated samples. LOI recorded between less than 1 to 3%. It seems likely that magma evolution was substantially driven by crystal fractionation over time. The results of trace element investigation including Ba, Cu, Mn, Ce, Cr, Ni, Zn, Rb, Sr, V, Y, and Zr, point to an intermediate volcanism constraining the ash composition in Barbados. Utilization of Harker-type binary variation diagrams involving recent ash deposits in Barbados indicate differentiation trend with an evolving nature of the source volcanism. Composition of ash samples record time-integrated enrichment in light REE over heavy REE, and the volcanism in the source area changed character with time and point to an increase in the degree of partial melting and a decrease in crustal involvement with time

SEDIMENTOLOGY OF THE UPPER SCOTLAND FORMATION (EOCENE), BARBADOS

Representative samples collected from the Lower Scotland Formation (Eocene) outcropping in northeastern Barbados were investigated in conjunction with overall facies distribution and stratigraphic and sedimentological characteristics to interpret depositional environment and provenance of the fine-grained clastics. The Lower Scotland Formation is, for the most part, a fine-grained clastic-dominated sequence with occasional thin intercalations of gypsum, ironstone, and kaolinite. Distinctive deep-water-facies have been well-documented in dark gray shale units containing load cast, flutes, grooves and prods. In addition, turbiditic brown sandstone with a sharp erosive base and pelagic caps also characterize the base of the formation. Notable marine fauna observed include Nummulites, Orbitoids, and occasionally Discocyclina sp. The Lower Scotland Formation has been intensely folded and faulted and, in many places, shows a thrust contact with the Upper Scotland Formation. Preliminary compositional studies involved both light and heavy mineral separation, as well as thin section studies. Detrital minerals in the formation include quartz (both monocrystalline and polycrystalline), feldspar (mostly altered microcline), and altered biotite. Heavy minerals include zircon, monazite, tourmaline, rutile, kyanite, and augite. Lithic fragment of varied source rocks are also observed. Bulk chemical and trace element investigation of the selected samples suggests an overall trend of immobile traces including Sr, Ba, and Rb increasing up-section and an overall decreasing silica content up-section. The Northwestern Venezuelan Shield, located to the south of the study area, acted as the primary source of detritus for the Lower Scotland Formation, the latter being subjected to pronounced structural deformation in response to the Cenozoic Andean Orogenic episode

EFFECTIVE INTEGRATION OF NASA STEM CURRICULA IS ALLOWING STUDENTS TO APPRECIATE EARTH SCIENCE CONCEPTS

NASA Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP) Aerospace Academy - MAA is a national, innovative activity designed to increase participation and retention of historically underserved and underrepresented K-12 youth in the STEM disciplines, particularly earth science and human exploration (HEO). HEO is dedicated to informing and educating the public about NASA\u27s plans for a new era in space exploration. Utilization of NASA satellite images, online climate education, space mathematics and other earth science-related resources is allowing students to conduct basic research and prepare themselves for a New York City-wide science competition. In addition to offering school children a solid grounding in STEM and increasing the involvement of parents in their children’s education, MAA at York fulfills many other important community needs. The majority of our MAA parents are immigrants and ESL people who greatly benefit from the program in terms of obtaining critical STEM education opportunities for their kids. The MAA Family Café allows them to locate, source, easily navigate and retrieve pertinent information and opportunities such as specialized high school admission, SAT, math and science tutoring, College Now Program, and most importantly online NASA educational resources for enhancing their understanding of STEM both for themselves and their kids. Family Café is certainly a venue where parents are also becoming STEM conscientious citizens and they often acknowledge the magical impact MAA did on their kids. Noticeable impacts demonstrated by many MAA students include higher performance in math and science tests, positive interest, renewed motivation, and curiosity. Pre-service teachers from the college also work for the program, thus in part fulfilling their fieldwork requirements and becoming better trained science teachers. Pre-service teachers are strongly encouraged to attend MAA classes, participate in STEM activities, and often guide students in the completion of tasks. With this close collaboration, pre-service teachers acquire an essential pedagogical component on formulating their own STEM activities and constructing a good lesson plan to achieve maximum effectiveness. NASA MAA STEM Outreach Grant Funded This Projec

SURFICIAL GEOLOGY OF YORK COLLEGE CAMPUS (QUEENS) AND MONTAUK POINT (LONG ISLAND): AN OPEN ACCESS TO GEOSCIENCE EDUCATION

To evaluate compositional and textural differences among the samples collected from York College (YC) campus (Queens), Montauk Point (MP) and Hither Hills (HH), Long Island, emphasis is given to the general geologic setting, overall grain size distribution, and relative abundances of light and heavy mineral assemblages. Geologic setting encompasses outwash plains (York College), fluvioglacial and glacial (Montauk Point) and beach and dune complex (Hither Hills). YC samples were collected from depth ranging 40 cm to 250 cm and are mostly an assortment of medium to coarse sand, granule to cobble sized, minor silt, and clay. Presence of low angle cross bedding was noted within the sandy unit located around 150 cm from the surface and melt-water dominated transport can also be associated with this feature. MP sand samples largely collected from the beach were mostly free of finer fraction and preponderance of coarse-sand sized grains is highly noticeable. Scattered presence of purple sand often containing garnet, magnetite, rutile, monazite, and tourmaline is suggestive of hydraulic sorting due to wave action and provenance of purple sand is presumed to be intermediate to mafic clasts associated with coastal bluff. Magnetite abundances within the purple sand range from 5% to 20%. HH sands are representative of both beach and dune complex and showing prominent cross bedding with foresets accentuated by heavy minerals. Dominant grain size is medium to fine-grained and well sorted sand. Subtle differences in terms of mineral assemblages including quartz, feldspar, muscovite, biotite, garnet, zircon, monazite, rutile, and tourmaline within the YC, MP, and HH samples suggest slight variation of the source rock composition and overall grain size trends also point to a particular sedimentary environment of deposition. These locations are easily accessible and form a great field geology sites for understanding surficial geology of Queens and Long Island and recent glacial activity that sculptured the landscapes. K9-16 earth science students can greatly benefit by having this opportunity located close to the urban setting of New York. Department of Education Grant titled Enhancing Talents of African American Students funded this research project

NASA MAA (MUREP AEROSPACE ACADEMY) STEM PROJECT AT YORK COLLEGE: ENSURING FUTURE STEM PIPELINE

Our ongoing K1-12 NASA-supported STEM activities has served over 5000 children since 2015, largely from groups that are undeserved and underrepresented in the sciences. These STEM activities have been successfully delivered for several years and include earth science, meteorite geology, rocketry, aerodynamics, star gazing, EV3 Mindstorm robotics, basic coding exercises, wind tunnel, 3D-printing, etc., conducted largely through our present MAA (MUREP Aerospace Academy) Project. Corporate funding from the Con Edison and National Grid ensures additional STEM dissemination to the students during the summer operation. Significant positive component of the MAA program is the availability and willingness of the former student participants (many of whom are completing STEM majors in college) to extend their helping hands to assist teachers and guide students to fulfill assigned tasks and share their rich experience to reinforce the value of STEM learning. In a way, they validate students’ participation and promote meaningful dialog with their parents, mostly first generation Americans, often with English as a second language, and lacking knowledge of the importance of the STEM disciplines and careers built around it. Recent involvement of the City University of New York’s (CUNY) Explorer’s Program, a vigorous initiative undertaken by the CUNY to bring thousands of middle school students to the various CUNY campuses, including York College, opened a formidable partnership building opportunity for the MAA to tap into the future pipeline by engaging visiting students with our STEM facilities and educating these young and curious minds about the future STEM potential both in selecting exciting academic and career options. STEM outreach delivered through hands-on, team work, in an experiential and critical thinking environment is becoming a catalyst for motivating numerous students towards earth science and relevant NASA content. This way, MAA Program is creating a STEM conscious young student body and providing a strategic recruitment tool for various undergraduate STEM disciplines. Early involvement of middle school students in STEM activities can be deemed as a powerful and viable mechanism to overcome an apparent shortage of STEM workforce representing minorities, women and financially disadvantaged groups

COMPARING GEOSCIENCES-RELATED ENGAGEMENT GENERATED DURING AND AFTER THE USE OF MULTIPLE PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES: ANIMATED VIDEOS, YOUTUBE, INTERACTIVE EDUCATIONAL GAMES, GROUP DISCUSSION AND POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased educators’ reliance on online learning tools such as Blackboard Collaborate Ultra and Zoom meetings to deliver geoscience-related lessons in real-time. Assessments were conducted using introduction to geology, environmental geology, and oceanography - part of the City University of New York\u27s (CUNY) newly implemented pathways curriculum. These general education courses belong to scientific world and life and physical sciences category and are intended for seamless transfer between CUNY campuses. Students, however, have the option to disengage from participation. Students are able to disable microphones and cameras, as well as rely entirely on text-chat if they choose. Students also have the option to simply log-on and not be physically present at all. If a practitioner does not advocate for forced participation via assigning a heavy weight of the course grade to participation, then the burden of bolstering engagement is almost entirely on the practitioner. This study attempts to review different pedagogical approaches and create a rubric to measure engagement during and after the delivery of the course contents. These approaches include short animated videos, long, medium, and short YouTube videos, interactive educational games, group discussions and debates, PowerPoint presentations, etc. The goal is to find approaches that deliver an effective learning, but still encourage organic class participation. Initial findings are as follows: short animated videos had the most total engagement with highly positively correlated with engagement during and after; long YouTube videos generated the most engagement during and after; single-player interactive educational games tied for highest total engagement and encouraged discussion during the game as well as after; short PowerPoint presentations with salient information did much better than longer presentations; and group discussions (when engaged upon) generated a moderate amount of total engagement. Trends included: length correlated positively with discussion during delivery, but negatively with discussion after delivery; intensity played no part in discussion during an activity, but correlated positively with discussion afterwards. In general, high intensity material of any kind, has been deemed the best

RECRUITING AND RETAINING K9–16 STUDENTS THROUGH FIELD- AND LABORATORY - BASED GEOSCIENCE EXPERIENCES

Since 2004, we have been directly involved with the GSA to provide access and opportunities for K9-16 students, particularly those interested in the broader aspects of geoscience-related topics, to present their field-and- laboratory based research outcomes at professional conferences and to learn from each other. So far, well-over 400 students from the U. S. and abroad have taken advantage of this opportunity and participated our topical sessions. It is quite gratifying to report that many of these students, as a result of their attendance at the GSA conference, felt a continuing need for exposure to high-level professional venues with effective knowledge-sharing and improving the level of understanding of the presented material. In addition, several presenters enthusiastically acknowledged their satisfaction with the significance of attendance at such high level meetings and potential to improve their chances of professional employment. Potential employers valued their experiential learning skills from both the educational and communications point of view and appreciated their endeavors and the preparation needed to attend and present at GSA conferences. Present-day extreme weather phenomena, environmental degradation, increased mega-flooding event, landslides, access to fresh drinking water, build-up or upgrading of aging infrastructures, etc. are closely tied to geological processes and anthropogenic practices. Students need to observe and connect geoscience concepts and understanding of the various phenomena, including representative case studies, to validate geoscience as a transformative discipline and its interdependence with other STEM disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and biology. We strongly believe that the future geoscience workforce needs to be trained from as early as the K9-12 grades via an integrated earth science curriculum that allows an open access to field-and research based content, creates inquiry-based knowledge, promotes group dynamics, and instills a sense of belonging. Given that over 70,000 K9-12 students took the Earth Science Regents examination last year in New York City alone, it will be worthwhile to work with the new cohort and provide them with a variety of learning tools to engage, inspire and attract them to the future geoscience-related workforce build-up

MULTI-FACETED GEOSCIENCE RESEARCH USING OPEN ACCESS RESOURCES: THE SUCCESSFUL PARTICIPATION OF K9-16 STUDENTS

Students interested in geosciences, for the most part, missed out their traditional field- based research activities due to strict social distancing, travel restrictions and/or lacking financial support. An absence of physical laboratory opportunities forced students to choose topics deemed doable through online research. Available data from online sources on extreme weather related case studies, flooding, droughts, groundwater depletion in urban and suburban areas, coastal erosion rate, sealevel rise, landslides, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and atmospheric pollution became quite handy and lucrative. Readily available pertinent data sources enabled K9-16 students to conduct summer research at “stay home” situations. Selective peer mentoring was also available remotely to representative students, mostly led by geology faculty. It certainly facilitated both individual and group-based learning of geoscience- related research. Group projects were very effective in promoting team dynamics by encouraging participating students to engage in discussions during breakout sessions. This aspect is very significant for students, considering geoscience-related research often requires close collaboration between multiple individuals. The retrieval of online data mostly became available to students from regularly posted information by the NASA Earth Observatory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, American Meteorological Society, European Space Agency, United States Geological Survey, and Environmental Protection Agency. Filtering of critical data and establishing their relevance to a chosen topic often required patience and proper time management. Once the data were selected, students needed to run basic statistical investigations and come up with graphical representations, document trends, and signify their bearing on the overarching research question. The outcome is that COVID 19 opened up a new dimension and pedagogical approach to engage K9-16 students in geoscience-related research. Engaged students became proficient in data collection techniques, acquired scientific communication skills, and learnt about time management. Overall, the K9-16 students involved became self- motivated and were highly successful in reaching their research goals

ADDRESSING THE LEARNING LOSS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC THROUGH THE ADAPTATION OF VIRTUAL PLATFORMS

The York College-hosted NASA MAA (MUREP AEROSPACE ACADEMY) has always played a pivotal role in minimizing the learning loss during the summer months, which was heightened during the pandemic. Support from AT&T, Con Edison and NASA enabled the MAA program at York College to offer a virtual STEM education with an earth science concentration to 1000 plus underserved K1-12 students from the community last summer, including 160 high school students. Two factors made this endeavor fruitful: allowing additional time to engage in STEM lessons and increasing self-motivation to successfully accomplish assigned tasks. Students built partnerships and resolved technical issues with the smaller class size. MAA students normally receive more than three hours of uninterrupted STEM lessons, as opposed to less than 90 minutes of instruction time in math and science classes in their respective public schools. Based on the successful outcome from the 2020 operation, York’s NASA MAA will be continuing its peer mentoring initiative, with the goal to increase the scope and allow additional students to receive both academic and research training during summer 2021, fall 2021 and spring 2022. Applied mathematics including analytical geometry, trigonometry, number theories, and algebra, as well as science and python-based programming lessons will be offered to students. The other notable pedagogical focus will be to provide meaningful connections with scientific vocabulary and how to communicate effectively. Group or individual presentations will be used in classroom activities. Modified and newly structured math and science curricula will enable participating students to fully engage in an interactive learning environment through discussion, breakout sessions, and homework. Individual math and science lessons are built on the best practices tailored down to the students\u27 reach and are aimed at fostering teamwork and group learning. Consequently, it is very important for the MAA summer program to continue to offer evidenced-based STEM education to minority students and allow them to become knowledgeable, well informed, and ready to apply for internships and attend college

POSITIVE OUTCOMES OF INVOLVING UNDERGRADUATE AND HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN BROADER ASPECT OF EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE THROUGH PEER MENTORING AND RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

The importance of involving undergraduates and high school students in field-and-laboratory research investigations at an early stage through peer mentoring has been clearly demonstrated as a critical tool for essential training to fully comprehend academic content and a deeper understanding of the various STEM, geoscience-and- environmental science related topics. As far as we are concerned, student presenters/participants (over 1000) in our topical sessions since 2004 have always found face-to-face presentation through poster sessions to be an ideal scientific venue where exchange of knowledge and discussion are fruitful, constructive and encouraging. It is quite revealing to note that among the student participants, 60% were female and they also dominated both undergraduate and high school populations! Student- led presentations at the GSA annual meeting (s) opened a plethora of academic gains, including appreciating the relevance of the topics presented, networking opportunities, preparation for graduate studies, and increasing self-esteem. Several student presenters, who have now completed their college education and are currently employed, have responded to us and said that their current employment experience is enhanced by the fact that our topical sessions primarily focused on the acquisition of experiential learning skills and provided them with career-oriented knowledge. It clearly supported our belief that research experience is vital to a well-rounded education and readiness for professional employment. We find this to be very useful in attracting urban students, particularly low-income and academically challenged students to pursue the geosciences since traditional classroom teaching alone cannot effectively create a sound pedagogical environment suitable to promote geoscience as a college option or as a career choice. It is becoming a routine practice in many City University of New York (CUNY) institutions, particularly York College, Virginia Commonwealth University, and city high schools to involve underrepresented students at an early stage and bring research opportunities to them through STEM research initiatives supported by MUREP Aerospace Academy - National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), State Education Department, AT&T, Con Edison, National Grid, and National Science Foundation (NSF). Such collaboration ensures that the STEM/geosciences pipeline is constantly enriched in order to meet the future needs and challenges faced by society