This survey course covers the fundamentals of geology and earth science, helping students understand how the Earth was formed and the forces shaping its continued evolution. It also introduces students to how geological resources are used in human civilization. Key topics include rock and mineral formation; weathering and soil formation; plate tectonics; Earth’s interior; crustal deformation; earthquakes and volcanoes; mass movement; hydrology; and applications of geological resources for human use.

This course was developed by Kimberly Schulte from Columbia Basin College with contributing work from Lumen Learning. The course is based on Wenatchee Valley College’s Geology 101, material from the USGS and CK-12, and videos from multiple sources.

Acknowledgments

This book has benefited from the contributions of many people, including Matthew Bees, Rachel Blandon, Melissa Driskell, Viswanatha Karanth, Lori Lamm,  Zhiyan Lin, Lisa Mangan, and Gabrielle Pedigo.

About Lumen

Lumen Learning courseware is based on open educational resources (OER). When we can find well designed, effective OER that are appropriately licensed, we use them in our courseware. When we can’t find pre-existing OER, we create original content and license it as OER (under a Creative Commons Attribution license).

Lumen’s authoring process doesn’t end when our courseware is released. Our choice to adopt open educational resources means that we have the copyright permissions necessary to engage in continuous improvement of our learning content. Consequently, our courses are continually being revised and updated. Errata reported for our courseware are fixed in a matter of days, as opposed to the traditional model in which errors persist until the next “edition” is printed (often a year or more). Students and faculty can suggest improvements to our courses directly from within the courseware as they use it. And we conduct regular analyses to determine where students are struggling the most in our courseware, and make improvements that specifically target these areas.

Given our unique approach, our list of authors and other contributors may look different than the lists you are used to seeing. We provide both a list of the primary content authors (the people involved in the initial creation of the course) and a list of everyone who has contributed suggestions and other improvements to the course since it was first released. We invite you to join us as we create courseware that supports student learning more effectively each semester.

If you’d like to connect with us to learn more about adopting this course, please Contact Us.

You can also make an appointment for OER Office Hours to connect virtually with a live Lumen expert about any question you may have.

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