GEOS 220: Environmental History of Southwest
Outside Activities
Outside activity #1:
Crossdating Tree Rings by Skeleton PlottingAccess this activity on the web through this page.
First, read the explanatory pages that lead up to the fun page: Try skeleton plotting for yourself.
When you succeed at crossdating a virtual sample:
- Make it obvious that you succeeded:
- Line up your winning skeleton plot with the master chronology
- Put the plots as far right as possible, but still visible
- Show the answer box
- Set the core magnification at 1x
- Put a part of the core that has highly variable ring growth in full view
- Capture an image of the crossdating applet:
- For PC users, do an "alt-print screen" to take a snapshot of the screen.
- For Macintosh users with OS X, there are two options for importing a screen shot into your word processor.
- Press this combination of keys: crtl+cmnd+shift+4. This will turn the mouse icon into a cross hairs with which you can select the portion of the screen which you wish to capture.
- Use the "grab" application. The easiest way to locate it is to open spotlight and type grab. Since this is an application, it will be separated from documents that contain words, etc.
- Open your favorite word processor.
- Edit-Paste Special into a document.
- Re-size the image to be reasonable.
- Fill in page with text (should be about ½-page typed): What you learned about crossdating.
- For example, in what cases might a tree-ring sample not be crossdateable?
- The explanatory pages have many pearls of wisdom in this regard.
- Writing tip #1: Avoid superfluous subjects doing stuff:
- Instead of: Dendrochronologists crossdate tree-ring samples.
- Try: Tree-ring samples are crossdateable.
- One page total (with your figure).
- Due Thursday, Feb 2, 2012.
Outside activity #2:
Arizona State MuseumThe University of Arizona has many museums, most of which are on the main campus and free of charge to students. In this activity, you are to visit the Arizona State Museum in order to learn about recent human-environment interactions in the Southwest. The actual assignment is as follows:
- The Museum is on the north side of University Blvd, across the street from Centennial Hall and west of Old Main.
- Museum hours are 10-5 PM on Monday–Saturday; closed Sunday.
- Admission to the museum is free for UA people, including students, but bring your Cat Card.
- Specifically for this activity, visit the "Paths of Life" exhibit. Expect to spend about an hour in this exhibit.
- Write an essay on just one tribe featured in the Paths of Life:
- Pick one modern tribe featured in the Paths of Life (but not Yaqui)
- Focus on human-environment interaction. For example:
- Did (does) this tribe practice agriculture?
- If not, how did (does) this tribe obtain food?
- How did (does) this tribe manage for water?
- Did (does) this tribe utilize its land on a seasonal basis? How so?
- Required: 1-page essay, typed, double spaced.
- Graded on depth and writing.
- Use more than one paragraph
- Don't forget a topic sentence for each paragraph
- Try writing completely without any first-person "I" or "we"
- Due Thursday, Mar 1, 2012.
Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721 USA
Main Office: (520) 621-1608, Fax: (520) 621-8229
Comments to Paul Sheppard: sheppard @ ltrr.arizona.edu
Copyright © 2001-2012, Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, The University of Arizona
Revised — January, 2012
URL: http://www.ltrr.arizona.edu/geos220/activities.html
