Science Outside of the Classroom

The benefits of field trips are important to student learning and provide memorable experiences that enhance what is taught in the classroom.  Many field trips offer students a more hands-on and interactive learning environment than the classroom.  Most students learn best this way!

I basically teach earth science in my classroom.  I can teach through hands-on labs, PowerPoint presentations with great pictures of the concepts, or informational text about what we are learning.  Unfortunately, I learned from my own experiences of getting pictures for a PowerPoint presentation, that going out to take photos of the different rock types or weathering etc. was probably more beneficial than the 

 presentation itself.

Here is a picture of mechanical weathering.  It is a good picture but to actually see it in person is to understand what is happening that much better.  You can touch the rock, see its size, and experience it in a totally different way than in the classroom.  This is a picture of how the granite in the White Tanks Regional Park collects water during the rainy season, hence the name White Tanks.

 

These catchment areas are stunning and memorable when seen in person, but not so much when only seen in a digital picture.  The entire journey of getting to the area, hiking, eating lunch out in nature, becomes part of the memory of the learning experience.  

I also teach about biomes in my ecology unit. I do use a lot of PowerPoint and photos to try and get my point across.  If you live in a particular biome and can take a field trip to actually see the plants and animals the way they live, your students will be taking away so much more from this experience!  Here is a saguaro cactus from the same area as the other two pictures.

The spidery plant at the right is called an ocotillo. It only becomes green after a rain, otherwise it looks like a bunch of dried sticks.  You can walk right up to these plants and see the little green leaves shooting out from the stick-like skeleton of this plant.  You can't really do that in the classroom.

Not only does this park have great geology and botany, it also has some great cultural features.  Never forget the cultural aspects of a field trip!  Here are some fabulous petroglyphs from this area.

Cultural aspects like these are fun for students to find and hunt for!  It reminds students how humans are a part of the ecosystem and how we used to live.  I would challenge you to find great areas near your school that can offer wonderful learning experiences that enhance your teaching.  Field trips are a must for students now days who don't venture too far from their front door.  How can they know about protecting the natural world if they don't know anything about that world?

View from White Tanks looking into Phoenix

Fall in New Mexico

Every fall I look forward to a week off in October when I can drive to New Mexico and take in the fall colors and the land of enchantment.  My travels usually end up in Las Cruces but this year Cloudcroft was my destination.  Unfortunately, I forgot my camera in Phoenix.  I blame that on being sick the week before break and functioning and packing in a brain fog.  All the pictures you will see here were actually taken on my phone and look decent enough I think.

Cloudcroft sits on a mountain which overlooks the Tularosa basin.  This picture shows the view.  The white area is actually White Sands National Monument, one of the largest gypsum dune field in the world.

My husband and I stayed at the Lodge in Cloudcroft, a historic lodge which used to house lumberjacks instead of tourists.  It is a nice old lodge with a great restaurant and it is said a friendly ghost as well.

Cloudcroft had a railroad which transported people and lumber in historic times.  Some of the old tracks and trestles from the railroad can still be seen outside of town.

There are some great hiking trails in and around Cloudcroft.  One that isn't too long is called Osha Trail.  This hiking trail can be accessed from inside the town or from a parking area right outside of town.   It is about 2.6 miles long and a gorgeous hike in the fall.  This is how the hike began at the trail head.

There are many beautiful aspens and maples along the trail that are really breathtaking in the autumn.  Here are a few pictures from along this wonderful hike.

The interesting thing from a geology perspective is that Cloudcroft, New Mexico sits on Permian aged rocks.  If you know anything about geologic time, the end of the Permian ends the Paleozoic era with a mass extinction much bigger than the Mesozoic extinction event that did in the dinosaurs.  The Permian extinction basically killed of mostly everything.  The rocks on the Osha trail are Permian and they also have many fossils that are easily spotted on this trail.  Here is a Permian cephalopod I spied in the middle of the trail.

Cloudcroft is not far from a solar observatory in Sunspot, NM.  If you are ever in the area a visit to Sunspot is a must.  The road to Sunspot is a scenic byway and the telescopes are very interesting as well.  Here is a big solar telescope at the observatory.

White Sands is another must if you are near the Tularosa basin. The sand is gypsum and extremely white and soft.  I was messing around on the dune field when I took this picture.

It generally looks like you are driving on snow in White Sands National Monument.  This is a very odd sensation because it isn't cold at all in October.

Most of the animals, through natural selection, are white on the dune field.  However, I was about a mile into the field and I saw this black beetle.  Who knows where he came from but he left some cool tracks as well.

If you are every in the southwest, do stop in to see New Mexico.  It is truly the land of enchantment.

The Organ Mountains, New Mexico

On a clear day, the Organ mountains can be seen from 100 miles away.  They are a rugged spine of needles that rise nearly a mile above the Tularosa Basin on the east and the Rio Grande valley on the west.  They are undoubtedly one of the most picturesque mountains in the southwest.  The stark, bare spine of rock and the changing colors of these mountains makes them a favorite among artists, photographers and rock climbers alike.  Here is a picture from my latest trip to southern New Mexico:

Organ Mountains, June 2012

The Organ Mountains are part of a tilted fault block which stretches from El Paso, Texas northward to central New Mexico.  These needles are the crown on this system which becomes less imposing northward.  As you can see, in the winter they are just as beautiful covered in snow:

Organ Mountains, December 2010

Red Mountain Hike

Red Mountain Amphitheater

Red Mountain geologic area is located about 25 miles north of Flagstaff in the Coconino National Forest.  It is a cinder cone volcano and part of the San Francisco volcanic field.  Red Mountain is unique because its internal structure is visible.  Off of highway 180 visitors are invited to hike a gentle uphill trail to the volcano.  Upon reaching it, hikers are surrounded by hoodoos of the partially eroded cone.  Another very interesting feature is the pyroxene crystals that are eroding out of the structure.  These become more numerous as you get closer to the amphitheater.  My children were so enamored with these minerals that we could hardly get them off the trail during a thunderstorm!

Red Mountain is well worth the hike.  Do take water with you as you may want to spend some time investigating the volcano.  Also, be cautious of snakes on the trail as I have sighted at least two rattlesnakes on this hike.

Dark Cinders at Red Mountain

Petrified Forest, Painted Desert, and Tonto Natural Bridge

I have once again taken my fall break in some of the southwest's most cherished locations.  I also take my camera lucky for you!  I haven't been in Arizona's Petrified Forest since 1993.  This year I decided to go back to see it again.  The logs you see in the following picture are indeed very much rocks!

 

You are not allowed to take any petrified wood out of the park of course.  There are however some locations near Winslow, Arizona and vicinity where you can collect pieces.  I found a great blue piece in 2007 in the Winslow area.  But alas, in the park, you cannot.  I guess this bird will stop you if you do!

 The painted desert was just beautiful this time.  It is a little tricky to take quality pictures of, however.  Here are a few from the overlook near the visitor center:

These two parks are in the same area so if you ever visit you can see them both in one day.  My husband and I did most of the hikes as well.  We stayed in Winslow at an old Harvey House on the old route 66.  The La Posada Hotel has been renovated and is a wonderful place to stay.

On our way back home to Phoenix we past Tonto Natural Bridge State Park and decided to stop.  I hadn't been there since I did my field school for my masters up in that area and really wanted to see it again.  It is the largest travertine  bridge in perhaps the world.

You can see the waterfall running from springs at the top.  This creates a micro-climate at the base of the bridge complete with many types of plants.  Here are a few pictures of the water and plant life in the bottom.

If you ever get a chance to visit Arizona, you will find amazingly different landscapes and climates in a relatively short distance.  These areas I have pictured are not far from one another.  They are within a few hours drive of Grand Canyon and Flagstaff as well.  Hope you have enjoyed my travels!

A Trip to Nebraska & Interesting Fossil Finds

For those of you who follow this blog, I posted previously that one of my goals this summer was to travel to southeastern Nebraska and visit my grandparents and other family members that still live there.  I haven't been back for a long, long time and it was great to go back.  My grandmother was turning 85 and we had a nice birthday party for her.  Here is a picture of my cute grandma:

 Flying over eastern Colorado and Nebraska is not as exciting as flying over the Grand Canyon or even Sedona, Arizona, but it is interesting, however.  I always find it amazing how much land is farmed in this country.  There are fields as far as you can see as you fly over in an airplane.  Here is an aerial shot from my plane:

Family members on both sides of my family are connected in some way to family farms.  The farm on my dad's side has been sold, but my father's brother still lives on a piece of that land in Clatonia, Nebraska.  My mother's family still owns a farm that has been in our family for well over 100 years.  Her brother still farms that land in Wilber, Nebraska.  Here is a picture of the farm at sunset:

My uncle has found some pretty interesting things on his land, geologically speaking.  I never thought about Nebraska's geology that much, I'll admit.  I did all of my undergraduate work in the southwest, both geology and anthropology.  I did my masters through Mississippi State University but my field school was in Arizona.  I know Arizona's and New Mexico's geology like the back of my hand, and you must admit we have some fine geology here. 

  My grandmother and I were walking around her yard and I noticed a rock with many shells in it.  When I questioned her about where it came from my grandpa remembered it came from the farm. He was unsure why they were digging at the time the rock was found but he said there were so many you could have filled a truck with them.  Here is a picture of the rock:

 I knew it was a marine bivalve but I guess there was too much going on to think about it further.  If I had, I probably would have remembered that Nebraska hasn't had an ocean over it in a long, long time.  I started digging around about the geology of Nebraska when I got home.  It turns out that Nebraska hides it's geology under crops and farmland.  There aren't any Grand Canyons in Nebraska but there is an overwhelming amount of fossils there.  In fact, over one-third of the fossils in the Smithsonian's Hall of Mammals is from Nebraska!  It just so happens that the right aged rocks are exposed at the surface.  Our family farm rests on Cretaceous aged rock.  The fossils found there are marine because an ancient sea had transgressed over this area.  The end of the Cretaceous was 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs and many other animals died out!  That means that rock with the fossil pelecypod shells is very old indeed.  Here is a webpage that shows which rocks are exposed in Nebraska:

The Paleontology Portal

It also shows a geology time scale.  If you want to see the dates for the time periods you can click "show" by the dates. 

My uncle also has land near Fairbury, NE.  Fairbury has even older  rocks exposed and fossil leaves are often found there.  This is a site that shows this area and the rocks and fossils found near Fairbury you can click on the map and fossils for information:

Jefferson County Fossils

Some of the leaf fossils in this area are probably near 100 million years old because they are found in the Cretaceous Dakota Formation.  That means the rocks with leaf fossils in them that my family has found on this land is incredibly old and very interesting to me.

There are also many Cenozoic fossils in Nebraska.  Mammoth and mastodon fossils have been found in 90 of 93 counties in this state.  I know more about invertebrate fossils than I do vertebrates but I would venture to guess that the bison skull my uncle found on his ranch is probably much older than a modern bison:

I am looking forward to going back to Nebraska, this time with my rock hammer, and really doing some fossil hunting!

My Trip to New Mexico

My mom lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  Last week my kids and I drove from Phoenix to visit.  Unfortunately, it was just as hot as Phoenix.  Right at the New Mexico/ Arizona border you could see the forest fires raging.  This smoke could be seen all the way in Las Cruces.  Here is a picture from my phone of the fire I could see from I-10:

Driving in to southern New Mexico is always an adventure.  Near Deming and Lordsburg you start seeing these signs that make you want to pull off the road.  They start with the dust storm sign seen below:

This sign looked like it was about to blow over anyway.  It was actually pretty dusty as you can tell.  This sign is followed by a sign that says do not stop in travel lanes and yet another that says zero visibility possible.  If that isn't enough, yet another sign says use extreme caution!  These signs are spaced close to one another and you get the idea that maybe you should turn around and go home.   I did make it through the dust storms to get to Las Cruces.  The mountains behind my mom's house look like this:





This picture doesn't really do the Organ Mountains justice, however.  We all had a great time together despite the heat.  All that smoke from Arizona made for some nice sunsets as well: