• Explanation
• Rubric for the term project
• Checklist for the term project

Explanation

The term project is your opportunity to take what you learn in the class and apply it to the real world by examining the geology of a field site that you have chosen. See the Term Project Instructions. You will document your field site by taking photographs, identifying the specific geological features that you find there, and interpreting the geology as the result of a sequence of geological processes.

Before you begin your term project, you will have prepared and submitted a term project plan. The predictions you made in your term project plan regarding the geology of the field site will help guide your field work, as you check to see if the geological things you predicted about the site were correct or not. Predictions that turn out to be false are just as valuable and credit-worthy as predictions that turn out to be correct, just so you write down in your term project what you actually found in the geology of your field site, compare to your predictions, and give a refined explanation of the geology of your field site, based on how your predictions stood up in light of reality and based on the geology you actually did find there.

The term project starts halfway through the course with a weekly discussion about the term project and your creation of a term project plan. Because comparing what you find in the geology of your field site with the predictions you make in your term project plan is such an important part of the term project, the more specific and well-researched your plan is, the more successful your term project is likely to be.

The format of your term project is important. For example, your photographs must be in the pages of the report, associated with the captions (see details below).

The content of your term project includes a description of your term project location, a map that allows the reader to get to exactly the same places where you stood (you can create more than one map if you think it is necessary), a stratigraphic column that you have created yourself, and most of all, your presentation of the geology that you observed at your field site, a comparison of the results with what you had predicted, and your final interpretation of how your site formed in terms of a geologic history - a sequence of geologic events.

Finally, as in any extended writing you do in this class, a list of specific references is required at the end.

Checklist

An exemplary term project will have:

• A title page in front
  • your name on the title page
  • field site location in the title or on the title page
• A statement of what was predicted in your term project proposal
  • Note that the quality of the hypotheses in your term project plan - the geology you propose finding at your field site - will influence the quality of the term project.
• A statement of where you went (in other words, where your term project field site is located)
• A location map, with the source of any copied maps noted on the map page as well as being included in the list of citations at the end of your report
• Clear, focused, color photographs, large enough to show the details in them
• A caption for each photograph that includes a detailed description of the geology shown in each photograph (see types of geological features to identify in the following bullet points)
• Identifications (accurate names) of the rocks and their detailed contents that you found and photographed at your field site
  • Besides naming the specific rock types, details in the rocks might include minerals you can identify, fossils, grain sizes in clastic sediments, sedimentary structures, vesicles in volcanic rocks, igneous textures such as porphyritic, and so on
• Identifications of the unconsolidated sediments (such as sand, gravel, clay, or boulders). Unconsolidated sediment has never been lithified into sedimentary rock and is found on or just beneath the earth's surface. (Unconsolidated sediment is usually relatively young geologically. Glaciers, streams, floods, landslides, wind, and waves along shorelines are among the agents that have recently deposited unconsolidated sediments on the earth's surface.)
• Identifications of any noteworthy geological landforms you found and photographed at your field site
  • There are many possible landforms, such as a V-shaped stream valley, or a stream with a wide flood plain and a meandering stream channel, or a U-shaped glacial valley, or a coulee (steep-sided, flat-floored canyon with no through-going stream in it), or a cinder cone or other type of volcano, or a hogback ridge, or a glacial moraine, and so on
• Identification of the types of geologic structures that you found and photographed at your site
  • Examples of geologic structures include tilted layers that were once horizontal, faults, folds, and joints
  • If you see faults or folds, try to distinguish and name which types, such as a normal fault, a reverse fault, or a thrust fault, an anticline, or a syncline.
• Identification and discussion of the contact relations between different types of rock that you found and photographed
  • For example, one layer of rock or unconsolidated sediment may be superposed on top of another, or one body of rock may be cutting across another if an igneous intrusion occurred
  • It is important, if you find layers of different types of rock, to consider not only which layer is on top of the other, but whether or not the contact relationship may be an unconformity.
    • if so, state which type of unconformity - either a nonconformity, a disconformity, or an angular unconformity
• Relative age relationships - what is the oldest layer or body of rock you saw, and which is the youngest layer or body or rock or unconsolidated sediment that you saw
  1. describe how you used the principles of relative geologic age, especially superposition and/or cross-cutting relationships, to determine the age sequence
• Absolute geologic ages (such as middle Miocene would be one example, or between 6 and 17 Ma would be another example)
  1. Cited references must be given for the sources of your absolute geological ages.
• A comparison of what was actually found with what was hypothesized to be found in the term project proposal
  • Discussion of which of your predictions seem to have been correct
  • Discussion of which of your predictions did not prove to be correct
  • Discussion of things you discovered that you had not predicted
• A stratigraphic column of your own creation
  • Not photocopied or copied exactly from some other source (even though you can get the idea for much of your stratigraphic column from sources you have read - and don't forget to refer to and cite those sources)
  • All or nearly all the layers in the stratigraphy need to be ones you you have shown a picture of, identified in the picture captions, and discussed in the written-out geologic history of your field area
• A written-out geological history, also known as a narrative, of the geology and the geological history of the field area you examined
• Meets the exemplary writing standards for the course, including a complete list of references

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