• Project Goal and Objectives
• Requirements
• Tips
  • Note on Parks and Monuments
  • Note on Working with Another Student
• Term Project Planner

Project Goal and Objectives

The goal of your term project is to apply your geologic learning to a study of a field site that you choose yourself. To help you choose a term project field site, you can ask for input from your instructor about field sites you are considering. In addition, in the weekly discussion folder dedicated to discussing your term project proposal this quarter, you will propose and discuss a field site you are thinking of, and will get feedback and suggestions about it from the other students and the instructor.

It must be a site that you visit in person and examine yourself, a site that you take photographs and rock samples of yourself, during the academic term you are taking Pacific Northwest geology.

Objective 1. Choose an outdoor site. You must choose a site with accessible exposures of geology that you can visit in person. Do not choose a site that is a park with displays or a visitor center featuring geological information.

You may choose a site that you have scouted out or visited previously. Or, you may choose a site that is new to you. Remember, whatever you choose for a site must have accessible geological exposures. Some students may have accessible geological exposures where they live or within walking range, others may have to drive to find a site with sufficiently exposed geology.

Your field site can include several spots that you examine within a few square mile area or along a single traverse of up to a few (no more than five) miles, but it cannot be too big a site. For example, it cannot be all of the Columbia Plateau, nor can it be all of the North Cascades, those would be way too big for a field site for the Pacific Northwest geology term project. You must be more specific than those examples in the size of the site you choose and how you describe it.

If you do not live in the Pacific Northwest, you will still have to study the geology of an accessible, outdoor field site in your area, along with the added proviso that you will have to compare it with the geology of the Pacific Northwest. Is it analogous to (similar to) something in the geology of the Pacific Northwest, and if so, why?, or is it unlike anything in the geology of the Pacific Northwest and if so, why? The answers to those questions are just add-ons to the rest of the term project as described in these instructions, if studying a site outside of the Pacific Northwest.

Objective 2. Propose your hypotheses about what you will find geologically at your chosen field site. Before you write your hypotheses, research your site's geology using written and published sources (including online). Based on what you have read, write a proposal as to what (briefly) the site's geologic history is and what rocks, sediment layers, landforms, and geological structures you predict that you will find when you visit the site.

The following note is of foundational, absolute importance: You must consult a REAL geologic map that includes your field area if you are to propose a term project that is acceptable, and if you are to complete a passing term project. Along with the instructions that are provided on how to find the geologic map or maps you need, your instructor will work with you, as much as you ask for, for finding and reading the appropriate geologic map (or maps) for your project.

By completing the first two objectives, you will be putting together your Term Project Plan, a written document that you post in the online classroom about halfway though the quarter. See the online classroom schedule for due-date details. See the Term Project Planner for details about the document itself.

Objective 3. Conduct the field work and field-based research to produce the term project itself. To do this, you must visit the site -- in person, up close, and hands on -- and examine it to see which of your hypothetical predictions you can confirm and document. Collect your evidence by taking digital photographs and making detailed notes. You may also wish to collect and label some rock samples for closer study away from the field site.

Objective 4. Write up your term project. Explain what you found in the field, and what your field evidence supports in terms of the site's geology and geologic history. Along with the written narrative, the heart of the term project is the photos you take for which you write detailed captions. Create and include a location map and a full bibliography of your information sources.

Objective 5. Prepare a written summary of your completed term project and post it in the Term Project Written Summary forum in the online classroom.

Requirements

1. Your term project must be based on your own photographs, taken during the same academic term that the class takes place.


2. You must make use of, refer to, and cite in the bibliography, the most detailed, up-to-date, published geologic map, (or maps if your field site crosses a map boundary), available. All the necessary geologic maps are available online. Get help from your instructor on this as much as you need.


3. Information you find in print or online resources is important in developing your hypothetical predictions of what you will find at your site. However, what is most important are your photographs and your documentation of what you actually find at your field site.
   
   If you do not find evidence at your site of something you read regarding the geological history of that area, make clear in your term project that you did not confirm that prediction.
   
   Instead of reading online or in books for "answers," spend most of your time working to show and explain in detail those geological features that you find evidence of at your field site.
   
   Specifically and carefully:
   • Identify all the rock types you encounter and photograph.
   • Photograph and do your best to name the minerals and other details you see in the rocks, which might include:
     • vesicles in volcanic rocks
     • sedimentary structures in sedimentary rocks
     • grain sizes and shapes and minerals in clastic sedimentary rocks
     • fossils in sedimentary rocks (if you happen to find any, which is not common)
   • Photograph and identify any geological structures, such as:
     • faults
     • folds
     • tilted layers that were originally horizontal
   • Observe and document evidence of relative age of the rocks and layers of sediment, based on the principles of relative age relationships in geology that you have learned in this class.
   
   
4. Your term project is likely to succeed to the extent that you identify and explain what is in your photographs in terms of geology. Try your best to identify and describe the actual geology you see and document in your photographs, notes and rock collecting.


5. The most successful term projects include discussion and evidence of the relative age relationships among the rocks and layers of sediment. Also, be sure to represent the relative age relationships in the stratigraphic column you create.


6. Include VERYclose-up photographs of the rocks and their features, such as minerals, AND medium-distance shots of outcrops, AND broader-view photographs of the landforms at your field site.


7. Your photo captions are very important. In each caption, provide complete details, such as the types of rock being shown, the minerals in the rocks, and the structures in or between the rocks.


8. Logically and explicitly connect the things you show in your photographs to a coherent geological description and geological history of your field site. These two items are the text of your term project. They go beyond the photo captions to put the whole story together.



9. In writing the geologic history portion of your term project combine what you have learned from outside sources (information from this course and other reading) with the evidence you collect from visiting and thinking about your field site. Include the age sequence of geological events that have occurred at you field site.
   • You might have some absolute ages to include based your reading. Also apply such principles of relative geological age determination as the principle of original horizontality, the principle of superposition, the principle of cross-cutting relations, the principle of faunal succession, or the principle of inclusions.


10. Create and include a location map. If you use a map from the Web or copied from a book, as with anything else you get from other information sources, you must cite the source.
• Mark and label your field site clearly on the location map.
• The map must be detailed enough for the reader to go exactly to your field site, including specific secondary roads in the area.




11. All sources of information and any outside sources of images (such as maps) must be cited.


12. Your final product will have a LOT more in it, and look different from, the Virtual Field Sites in the course web pages. It will have a lot more detail, a lot more information, and a LOT more photos.
    
    You may NOT use any of the field sites that are already Virtual Field Sites for your term project, although you can use another location nearby. For example, you can use Echo Cove, which is a tributary valley to the Frenchman Coulee Virtual Field Site.


13. Your term project is due by the due date listed on it for this quarter. Your written summary is due as a posting in the online classroom early in the last week of the quarter. See the online classroom for due dates and further details.

Checklist of a complete term project:

_____ Term project plan posted in online classroom on time

_____ 15-25 pictures you took of your field site

_____ Detailed captions for each photo

_____ Location map showing precise location of your field site

_____ Written text includes geologic description and geologic history

_____ Complete list of references, INCLUDING the detailed, published geologic map or maps you used (REQUIRED)

_____ Written summary posted in online classroom on time

_____ Term project turned in on time

Tips

• Pick a field site that interests you and take many photographs. Include close-up photographs that you can see individual mineral grains or other sand-grain-size or smaller details. Also take photos of outcrops (feet across to tens or hundreds of feet across) and landscapes (thousands of feet to miles across in scale). 


• Take plenty of field notes to record your observations while you are visiting the site and make lots of sketches to aid your memory when you are away from the site.


• Record in your notes the rock types you observe in your field area. Collect some pieces of the main rock types and label them to keep track of which part of your field site they came from.


• Pay little attention to loose rocks on the surface or in streams. Loose rocks are not necessarily the same thing as the bedrock (solid rock) in the ground underneath. You can make an exception if you have evidence that a boulder is a glacial erratic, which is worth noting.


• Look for superposed layers of rock or sediment, one layer on top of another.


• If you find layers of superposed rock or sediment (one layer on top of some other very, different type of rock underneath, try to distinguish whether the contact between them is an unconformity. You might not have an unconformity exposed in your field area.


• Take notes on any geologic structures at the site. Examples include layers that are tilted or folded and dikes or veins cutting through outcrops.
  
  Faults are fracture zones along which the rock on either side has moved, been offset, in opposite directions. Faults cut off and disrupt layers, or beds, of rock and the same layers do not continue at the same level on the other side of the fault. You might not see any faults exposed in your field area.
  
  Make rough sketches of geologic structures in your notes to aid your memory and to help you focus on what you are seeing.. Take pictures of everything.

Important Note about Parks and Monuments:

Some parks and monuments with geology displays are not allowed, and certain other sites are not a good choice.

To foster development of your observational skills and your ability to apply what you learn in this course, Virtual Field Sites on the Pacific Northwest Geology website are not eligible as sites for your term project. By the same token, parks and monuments with geology interpretative displays or published geologic guides are not eligible (see the list of ineligible parks and monuments below). However, hundreds of state, county, and city parks, natural areas, and wildlife areas in the Pacific Northwest have no geology interpretative materials and therefore are eligible as field sites for your term project.

The parks and national monuments listed below are not eligible as term project field sites:

1. Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park (Washington State Park near Vantage)
2. Sun Lakes State Park (Washington State Park which includes Dry Falls)
3. Palouse Falls State Park (Washington State Park)
4. Olympic National Park
5. Mount Rainier National Park
6. Mount Saint Helens National Volcanic Monument
7. North Cascades National Park
8. Crater Lake National Park
9. Craters of the Moon National Monument,
10. Yellowstone National Park
11. Glacier National Park.

In addition, the following sites are not recommended as term project field sites. You should NOT choose one of these places:

• Beacon Rock on the Washington state side of the Columbia Gorge
• Castle Rock, a rock hill next to the Cowlitz River in southwestern Washington that lends the town of Castle Rock its name
• Saddle Rock near Wenatchee, Washington
• Peshastin Pinnacles in the Wenatchee Valley
• Burlingame Canyon near Walla Walla, Washington
• Twin Sisters near the Columbia River in the vicinity of Wallula Gap (off of Highway 12 between Tri-Cities and Walla Walla)
• Hat Rock (an Oregon state park) also on the Oregon side of the Columbia River below Wallula Gap
• Earthquake Point near Entiat on the Columbia River in Chelan County, Washington

Previous attempts at term projects at these sites have fallen short for a combination of reasons which add up to each of these sites being an unworkable choice for a successful term project 

Some of them can be part of a good term project if they are combined with a nearby location into a larger field site, such as by combining Peshastin Pinnacles with other selected spots in and around the Wenatchee Valley, or combining Saddle Rock with Dry Gulch. 

Consult with your instructor to get recommended combinations. 

Otherwise, avoid any of the sites listed above as a choice for a term project field site. 

Do not choose a body of water as your geologic field site.       Rivers and lakes are not appropriate field sites for the term project. An appropriate field site has outcrops which expose rocks and sediments.

Note on Working with Another Student

Several students can choose the same field site. You can choose to work with another student on a field site. Working together can contribute to safety, efficiency, and shared learning.

However, if you work with another student on the same term project field site:

1. Each of you must take your own photographs.
2. Each of you must write your own text -- not just reword one text, but create your own, unique report, in all aspects: photographs, captions, and summary.
3. Your term project must be unique, so that it is clear that you took the pictures and wrote the text yourself.

Term Project Planner

• The Term Project Plan is part of your Term Project.


• It has a specific due date (see online classroom). However, you are welcome to post a week-early, in-progress statement, and finish drafting and posting your final Term Project Plan by the end of the following week, replacing your initial plan. This enables you to incorporate feed-back you receive from your instructor (and possibly your classmates, should they make any comments), in your final plan. (You can also change your term project plan later than that if your chosen field site does not work out for you, for instance if it is covered by snow. If you do, send the instructor a notice of any changes as soon as possible.)


• Post your plan, with the answers to the following questions, in the "Term Project Plans" forum in the online classroom.


• As always with text that you post in the online classroom, you must NOT send it as an attachment. Put your term project plan in the body of the message.


• Be as specific as possible in each of your answers.


• Remember to use the question numbers in your message.


• Term Project Plan Questions:


1. Your name


2. The specific, clear to anybody from any country (who can read English), location of your project


3. The geologic history of your field site, based on what you have read or know about that area, and on what you have learned in the PNW Geology class that may apply to that area, and from what you may know of this place if you are already familiar with it from before, AND (required) based on your reading of the most detailed geologic map that includes your proposed field area within it


4. Your predictions of which rock types, geological structures, or other geological features you would expect to find there, if what you have read about is indeed evident in your field area. These are your hypotheses that you will be testing when you do your field research at your field site. The details of these predictions must be derived, at least partly (required) from your reading of the most detailed geologic map that includes your proposed field area within it

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