Tim Lutz

Evolution of biological complexity and its relation to taxonomic longevity in the Ammonoidea

The increase in biological complexity over evolutionary time has been the subject of extensive study and many hypotheses, but there are few data to document the increase or how organisms may have benefited by becoming more complex. By measuring the fractal dimension of the sutures of >600 ammonoid genera, we document the increase in anatomical complexity of the Ammonoidea and show that there is no differential survival between simple and complex forms. Simple sutures are present throughout the entire history of the Ammonoidea, but the range of variation of suture complexity increased over time as more complex sutures evolved.

Integrating geoscience into undergraduate education about environment, society, and sustainability using place-based learning: three examples

From water to energy, and from climate change to natural hazards, the geosciences (marine, Earth, and atmospheric science) have an important role to play in addressing a wide range of societal issues, with particular relevance to how humans can live sustainably on Earth. Although arguably important to developing solutions for many societal issues, more often than not, students have limited exposure to the geosciences in high school or college. To address this geoscience literacy problem, the Interdisciplinary Teaching of Geoscience for a Sustainable Future (InTeGrate) Talent Expansion Center has engaged members of the geoscience community and their colleagues in allied disciplines to implement and support strategies to teach geoscience in the context of societal issues and vice versa. Place-based learning is a particularly useful educational practice in helping link geoscience concepts to societal issues and other disciplines. The three examples from three distinctly different institutions of higher education—University of Utah, Metropolitan State University, and West Chester University—demonstrate the use of place-based educational strategies to connect the geosciences to societal challenges. Each of these courses uses variations of place-based pedagogy to provide students from a variety of disciplines the opportunity to learn about geoscience concepts in the context of environmental challenges in their own area. Each example describes the course in the context of its institutional setting, student audience, type of course, and learning outcomes; the geoscience-related societal challenges addressed, a description of pedagogical strategies, basic assessment information, and reflections on lessons learned and recommendations. These three examples illustrate that local places—on-campus, the surrounding community, and regional landscapes—provide a plethora of opportunities for students to apply their classroom knowledge to real-world issues. The extent to which an instructor will take advantage of the place-based opportunities is only limited by the imagination of the instructor(s) and the extent to which they want to use these pedagogies to achieve their learning objectives. Teaching geoscience in the context of societal issues using place-based educational practices illuminate the process of geoscience and build interdisciplinary problem-solving skills that connect geoscience to economic, societal, and policy issues related to a range of issues. Students think critically, ask critical questions, reflect and act on viable alternatives, and acquire knowledge, skills, and training so they can make a real difference in the world.

A Values Framework for Students to Develop Thoughtful Attitudes about Citizenship and Stewardship.

Geoscience teaching has primarily been oriented toward the value of science to explain natural systems. However, many kinds of values guide people’s responses to environmental problems, which originate when human expectations fail to match the behavior of natural systems. Examples from the literature show that practical environmental decision-making recognizes, and is formed on the basis of, diverse values. We propose a ‘values of nature’ framework based on Stephen Kellert’s (1996) values of life to provide a set of concepts and a terminology that engages students to recognize the values they bring to environmental issues. We show from our experiences in two different introductory courses that students using the values framework can develop thoughtful attitudes about the environment and can appreciate the views of those with different values.

Toward a New Conceptual Framework for Teaching about Flood Risk in Introductory Geoscience Courses

Abstract An analysis of physical geology textbooks used in introductory courses shows that there is a systematic lack of clarity regarding flood risk. Some problems originate from confusion relating to statistical terms such as “100-year flood” and “100-year floodplain.” However, the main problem is conceptual: statistics such as return periods and annual probabilities do not portray the variability inherent in flood recurrence and lead to misconceptions. An alternative conception of risk is proposed based on the analogy between playing a game of chance and living in a hazardous situation. This concept leads to the introduction of statistical ensembles as a means to characterize risk as a function of the duration of exposure to a hazardous situation. Presenting risk in relation to exposure time places floods in the framework of planning and problem-solving: how does the risk that arises from where we build relate to how long we want to be there? Methods and materials in the paper show how game play and ensembles can be introduced in the classroom. A supplemental Excel spreadsheet provides the means to generate ensemble diagrams from commonly available stream data and gives instructors the potential to customize their course materials by using data from local streams.