Allison Jacobel

Virtual Field Trips

to Canyon de Chelly National Monument

While on sabbatical I was fortunate to receive support from the Whiting Foundation and the Middlebury College Digital Learning and Inquiry (DLINQ) Fellows Program to create virtual field trips for my ECSC 340 Sedimentary Processes and Environments course.

Field work, including long days of hiking, scrambling, and sleeping outdoors, has long been considered a critical component of undergraduate geoscience education. Unfortunately, traditional field excursions can be logistically and physically challenging, and financially burdensome for participants, creating barriers to access and enhancing educational inequality. In contrast, virtual field trips are emerging as powerful tools in promoting accessibility and inclusion in geoscience education while maintaining many of the learning objectives of field-based work (e.g. Whitmeyer and Dordevic, 2020).

The power and appeal of virtual field trips has increased as the technology for capturing 2D and 3D imagery and video has become more affordable and increasingly pocket-sized. By leveraging newly accessible technology, including LiDAR on the iPad Pro, we can democratize access and provide more people with the opportunity to engage with novel and important landscapes.

My overarching goal with this field trip, and all of my teaching, is to help students from different backgrounds to connect with the Earth's processes and formations, nurturing a sense of curiosity and appreciation for the geosciences and a respect for the Earth.

These virtual field trips are still a work in progress and will be student-tested and evaluated in Spring 2027. Please let me know if you have suggestions. If you find these useful for your teaching please let me know and cite this web page! I am currently working on several more virtual field trips so stay tuned for updates.

Welcome

Canyon de Chelly has captured the imagination of people for millennia and it is a spectacular place to appreciate the beauty of our natural surroundings, the vastness of geologic time, and the resilience and resourcefulness of Indigenous people.

The first StoryMap of this collection welcomes viewers to the geographic context of the canyon and explains the objectives of the virtual field trip.

Deposition

This StoryMap is focused on the history of sedimentary deposition in Canyon de Chelly. The 370 meter canyon walls give us an amazing window into the climate and environmental history of this region over the last 290 million years.

We begin with reminders of the tools sedimentologists use to reconstruct paleoenvironment and guide you as you apply them to reconstructing the geologic history of Canyon de Chelly.

Weathering

Many of the spectacular features that have been preserved by the Monument are formed from the physical and chemical weathering of rock units. In this StoryMap we investigate the processes responsible for their formation.

This project would not have been possible without access and photography permits from the Navajo Nation and National Park Service, and a tour of Canyon de Chelly with the Navajo owned and operated Thunderbird Lodge. Financial support was provided by the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation.

Special thanks to Jeni Henrickson of Middlebury’s DLINQ for support with StoryMaps and project design, and to Karen Jackson whose help was critical for the (sleeting cold and then burning hot) field-based media capture.