Why have we had ice ages in the past? This resource explores the reasons why the earth's climate has repeatedly changed to create ice ages. A quiz is available to check your understanding.

This site contains in-depth information on crystalline solids. Includes basic concepts, pictures, learning graphs, and useful tools.

What causes the circulation of ocean waters that are too deep to be affected by wind? Find out how salinity and temperature drive the deep sea currents. This resource has several videos and an online quiz.

A detailed, interactive look at the mid-oceanic ridge. Learn more about slow and fast spreading ridges and how the polarity of the ocean floor helps determine the speed of spreading.

This site provides an overview of elements and atoms, the building blocks of matter.

Instructional module focusing on minerals. Discussion includes chemical composition, chemical structure, and the formation process. The site also includes an interactive practice quiz and links relating to the topic.

An excellent resource for learning about sedimentary rocks and how they form. The different types of sedimentary rocks and deposits found in Kentucky are listed, with links to dedicated pages for each. Covers clay, shale, sandstone,...

In this experiment, students look at Deep Hypersaline Anoxic Basins, or DHABs, that are present in the Eastern Mediterranean, and make a model of a DHAB to investigate how liquids that have different densities can form layers. This...

This article gives a detailed explanation of how transgression and regression of sea levels work to create deposits of sedimentary rocks. Illustrations show the layering that takes place over time. The article discusses how geologists...

This resource explains the depositional processes that occur in sedimentary rock formation to produce stratification, cross-bedding, graded bedding, rippled effects, and solidified mud cracks. Includes photographs of each type.

This textbook excerpt explains the concept of isostasy and the relationship of Earth's crust to the mantle beneath it. This process is compared to the effects of glaciation and describes the effect an ice sheet has on the crust, and the...

This article explains what radioactive dating is and describes the different techniques used, what they are used for, and the limitations of each.

Students will learn about the architecture that is in place to enable GPS and how to interpret data for a station's position. They will develop a time series plot and use the data to see that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is rifting Iceland....

This resource looks at how geologists are able to measure the movement of tectonic plates using satellite-based data and how they were able to surmise in the past that the plates were moving. It also discusses how to read GPS time-series...

This is the fifth version of a free textbook on paleomagnetism, published in 2018. The material is advanced but does provide information on many different topics for students doing research. Chapters include problems for students to...

Take a look at how a mine develops from the exploratory stage to reclamation of the land.

Read about the destructive process of desertification and how this impacts human beings, how satellite images provide data to document what is happening, and some solutions that have been developed to combat the problem.

This is the website for a United Nations organization that works to develop solutions for desertification. There are lots of resources for learning about how desertification is affecting different parts of the world and about what...

Explains what is meant by sediments, how they can become contaminated, the types of contaminants, how contamination levels are assessed, and methods of remediation. The side menu links to information about policies, contaminant...

This resource is from the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), an environmental research arm of the Department of Defense. It explains how sediment contamination has affected DoD facilities and what is being...

Access to information, policy initiatives, advice, and analysis on issues of energy efficiency and renewable energy, from the U.S. Department of Energy. Its network is responsible for tracking the technological, economic, and...

In this statement, The Geological Society describes the changes that are happening to the global climate in terms of what evidence has been observed in our geological history. For example, what happened during past events of rapid...

This site provides geothermal maps of Colorado with the intent being to identify possible sources of geothermal energy. It explains how the temperature measurements were taken and the reasons the results must be considered to be...

A very detailed article on the characteristics of waves and wave behavior. It discusses the influence waves have on the marine environment and the global climate, the physics of wave motion, the interactions between waves and wind, wave...