Geology 107

This written assignment involves describing the geology of a national park. There are 54 National Parks operated by the U.S. National Park Service, along with numerous additional National Monuments, historic sites, and other important locations. Choose one of the National Parks or monuments as your research topic - only one report will be allowed per park, so you must contact me to claim "dibs" on that park. A good place to start your research is in the reserve section of the library where two books on the geology of National Parks are on permanent reserve (see page 3 of your course syllabus for full information on Harris and Kiver, or Harris, Tuttle and Tuttle). You may check out the books for two-hour intervals but may not remove them from the Geology library. National monuments are not as well represented, so you should make sure that enough information is available for a geologic report.

For this report you will need to obtain information from at least three library (or bookstore) sources that contain geologic information specific to the national park you are describing. Each chapter in the reserved books contains additional references about the specific park, so you should not have any difficulty finding a more references. Ask the librarian for help using the computers to look up call numbers or to locate books in the stacks. Use of the internet should be limited to background research, but you may use an internet article as a primary reference if that article was already published in print form (e.g., an on-line copy of a published National Geographic article).

If we have not yet covered the aspects of geology represented by your National Park choice, read ahead in your text, look up information on the internet, or come talk to me before you get in over your head. This report must be in your own words, so you should not use long technical sentences that toe the line of plagiarism.

Some of the geologic information to include in your report are the age and types of rocks present, geologic structures (folds, faults, mountains), landforms, and the processes responsible for these features. You may also include non-geologic information (park location, history, wildlife, and tourist attractions) but this information should be limited to one or two paragraphs (papers that focus on the non-geological aspects of the park will not receive credit). Write your paper so that another Geology 107 student can understand the material - define new geologic terms, keep your descriptions simple, and make the report interesting.

Feel free to include one or two useful diagrams, drawings, or maps in your report, but these items will not count toward the page limit (grading will not include figures). Please make sure that the images are of high quality (photocopies of color photographs usually do come out well) and that you document your sources clearly.

All references must be correctly cited throughout your report. Obviously, most of the information included in your report is not original material, so you must be careful to cite information that is paraphrased and use quotation marks and cite the source of any direct quotes from a source. See the plagiarism section on your main handout.