Assignment 1 - Introduction-1
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Feb 20, 2024
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GEOL 1370 Assignment 1:
Introduction
Name: Ezekiel Awe
myUH ID# 2035949
Welcome to GEOL 1370: Natural Disasters! The goal of this first assignment is to get you familiar with some of the common tools and software we will use this semester. You’ll find there is a lot to read here; that’s because a large part of this assignment serves as a tutorial for performing actions in the various software packages. So, please read through this carefully and take your time. Seek help from one of our TAs in the GLC if you need it.
For written answers, click on the boxes and type in your answers. The boxes are set so your font
color is red
, please leave it red so TAs have an easier time grading. For questions that ask for images, you can copy and paste them.
First, let’s make sure you wrote your name and understand assignment expectations.
1.
Before beginning the next section, please acknowledge that you know answers need to be written in your own words in complete sentences except answer in tables. Images and screenshots should also be your own. In the box below, type “I know answers should be written in my own words and complete sentences. I also understand that any images or screenshots need to be my own”.
Part 1: Google Earth Pro
Google Earth is a collection of satellite images of the Earth. It is a valuable tool for geologists to observe Earth's features without traveling to those locations. If you don’t have it yet, you can download it here
. You need the desktop version because the web application does not have the
same functions.
Open Google Earth Pro and explore the map a little. Get familiar with how to move around the map and change the orientations with the options on the upper-right part of the screen.
Pro Tip: Pressing “N” will reorient the map with north up, and pressing “R” will reorient the map and reset the tilt.
2.
Move the map to look at Texas. Measure the distance from El Paso to Houston. To do this, click on the ruler symbol on the toolbar at the top. A box will open with different types of measurements you can take, the line measure is the default. Click on El Paso to start the measurement, click on Houston to end the measurement. What is the distance you measured from El Paso to Houston in miles and kilometers?
Distance (km)
Distance (mi)
1105
687
3.
With the ruler toolbox still open, click “save” to save your measurement line. Give it any name you like. It will now appear in the “Places” box on the left side of your screen. Right-click on the name of your saved line and select “Show elevation profile”. A new image will take up the lower part of your screen that shows the elevation profile of the line you made. This is how elevation changes along that line. Notice how El Paso is over 3,000 ft higher in elevation than Houston? Take a screenshot of your measurement and profile. For Microsoft Windows use the snipping tool
and select the area of your screen to make an image of and save it. For Mac
hit command+shift+4 and select the area your screen you want to make an image of and save it. Paste your screenshot below.
[paste image here]
4.
Click on the polygon tool. This allows you to click different areas of the map to create a shape, and Google Earth will tell you the area of that polygon. Measure the area of Texas by outlining its shape. You can make individual clicks to outline the shape
or you can click and hold and drag your mouse cursor to outline the shape. When you’re
done outlining, click on the “Measurements” tab to see the area. What area did you measure in km
2
and mi
2
. 271,097 mi
2 702,138 km
2
Area of Texas (km
2
)
Area of Texas (mi
2
)
702,138
271,097
5.
Take a screenshot of your measured outline of Texas with polygon toolbox and paste it below.
[paste image here]
6.
Let’s practice finding a location. Copy and paste the following coordinates into the search box in the upper-left corner (35°09'41.34"N, 138°40'34.39"E). What city and country is this?
Fuji, Japan
7.
What large, geologic feature lies about 22 km north of this city?
Mount Fuji
8.
Now use the search bar to find La Palma, Spain. This is a Spanish island off the coast of Africa. Look on the western side of the island for a location called “El Paraíso”, it is south
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of Los Llanos and north of Jedey. Click on the historical imagery icon in the toolbar
. Use the date slider to see what this area looked like on in in September of 2021 (Don’t enter a specific date in the advanced options, just use the blue sliding bar). Take a screenshot and paste it below.
[paste image here]
9.
Between September 19, 2021, and December 13, 2021, a volcano called Cumbre Vieja erupted, and lava flowed across the surface to the west. Move the date slider to January
2022 to see the area affected by the lava flow (it’s the area covered in black). Paste a screenshot below.
[paste image here]
10. While looking at the January 2022 view, you can now zoom in and measure of the surface covered by lava, similar to what you did in #5.
Area of lava (km
2
)
Area of lava (mi
2
)
1
.17
.
45
11. Exit the historical imagery so you can see the most recent imagery. Look at how the coloring of that lava flow is today compared to right after its eruption. Look around the island for evidence of other lava flows. Take a snapshot and outline the lava flow (you can use Microsoft Paint, PowerPoint or Apple Preview to make drawings on images).
[paste image here]
12. Download Volcano_Locations.kml
. A kml file is a file for Google Earth that can overlay different sets of data on the map. Open the file, it should automatically open in Google Earth. For this file, you are looking at all active volcanoes in the last 10,000 years (called the Holocene) as red triangles, and the last 2.5 million years (called the Pleistocene) as blue triangles. For this assignment, turn off the Pleistocene volcanoes; you only want to see the red triangles. To turn off that layer, look at the places menu on the left side, expand “Volcanoes of the World” and uncheck “Pleistocene Volcanoes”. What is the closest United States volcano to Houston?
Carrizozo
13. About 5,200 years ago this volcano erupted and created one of the longest lava flows in the world. How long was this lava flow (you need to measure it)? The flow is easy to identify, it’s the long black shape that extends southwest of the volcano. Use the measurement tool as you did in #3.
Length of lava flow (km)
Length of lava flow (mi)
6
9.44
4
3.15
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That’s it for Google Earth Pro. Taking measurements, making elevation profiles, finding locations, and loading and reading kml overlays will be part of several assignments this semester. You can think of this first section as a tutorial; come back to it if you need to relearn how to perform these tasks. Part 2: Microsoft Excel
Excel is a valuable program in just about every field of study because of its ability to make calculations with large data sets and visualize data with graphs. If you haven’t done so already, install the desktop version of Excel by logging into Access UH, clicking on the Microsoft 365 icon, and then clicking on “Install Office” on the upper-right corner (you may be asked to log into your Office 365 account, use the same username as Access UH but add @cougarnet.uh.edu
to the end of it, your password is the same as you use for Access UH). If you’re having trouble contact UIT
.
Download the Excel file named Excel Practice.xlsx
. When you open the file, you’ll see at the bottom there are several tabs, the first is labeled Class Demographics
.
Class Demographics
14. The Class Demographics tab is showing you the number of students per grade level in this class. First, let’s get Excel to tell us how many students are in this class. Let’s do this in three different ways (Yes, adding numbers is easy, but you’re learning how to make Excel do math for you for when we need something more complicated. Respect the exercise and get Excel to do it).
a.
Let’s tell Excel to add the number of freshmen and sophomores. Select cell E2 and type =73+209 then hit enter. Anytime you want Excel to make a calculation or use some other function, you need to begin each cell with an = because this lets Excel know you want it to calculate something. How many freshmen and sophomores are there?
282
b.
The better way to make calculations is to reference the cells so that even if you change the original value, Excel will still make or update the calculation. Let’s determine the number of juniors and seniors. Select cell E3 and type =B4+B5, then hit enter. In this case, you are telling Excel to add whatever values are found in the B4 and B5 cells. You can change the values in those cells and Excel will automatically recalculate the total. How many juniors and seniors are there?
258
c.
Finally, there is a function that we can use, called the SUM function. Click on cell B6 and type =SUM(B2:B5) and hit enter. The = sign tells Excel it needs to make a calculation, SUM is an Excel function that will add together all the cells you tell it to in the parentheses, (B2:B5) is the range you want to add. Excel will add cells
B2, B3, B4, and B5. A very useful function for larger datasets. What is the total number of students in this class?
540
15. Graphs are an excellent way to visualize data. Let’s practice by creating a clustered column (bar) graph of our course’s demographics. Select the data you want to graph by clicking and dragging across cells A1 to B5. With the cells selected, click on the “Insert” tab in the toolbar, then look for the “Charts” section. In the Charts section are several tiny symbols that represent different types of graphs. The symbol on the upper left is for
a column (bar) graph. Click on the column graph symbol, under the 2-D Column section select the Clustered Column graph and a bar graph of your selected data will appear (yay). For this question, you need to paste an image of your graph below.
[paste image here]
16. This graph is not properly labeled yet. In the “Chart Design” tab, you can click on “Add Chart Element” to add labels to your axes and other things. You can also improve your chart by changing font sizes, line thickness, and colors. Paste your updated chart below.
[paste image here]
Below is an example of a properly labeled chart (this is not the actual data you’re working with).
The chart has a title, properly labeled axes, a legend, and the text is legible.
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
Freshman
Sophomore
Junior
Senior
Number of Students
Student Level
Class Demographics
Number of Students
Volcanic Eruptions
Go to the next tab in the Excel spreadsheet labeled “Volcanic Eruptions”. This data is showing you the number of volcanic eruptions on Earth every year since 1960.
17. What was the total number of volcanic eruptions from 1960-2023? This is a good chance
to practice the SUM function in cell B66.
2165
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18. Let’s try a new calculation. What is the average number of volcanic eruptions each year?
There are 64 years on record, you could manually add up the number of eruptions and then divide by 64… but that is time-consuming. Excel makes calculating averages easy. Click on cell B67 and type the following function to calculate the average: =AVERAGE(B2:B65) and then hit enter. This works like the SUM function, except now we
are calculating the average. What did you get?
33.82
Pro Tip for quick calculations: if you click and drag to select all the numbers in the data set (B2 to B31), you can look at the very bottom bar in Excel and it will tell you the average, the number
of data points, and the sum of the data points.
19. Some people have suggested the number of volcanic eruptions on our planet has been increasing while others have said that about the same number of eruptions occur each year but we are just more aware of them because of technological advances and an increase in population to observe volcanic activity. Excel gives you a way to analyze this. Follow the steps from question 16 above to create a graph, only this time you should make a Scatter Plot with straight lines and markers. The scatter plot symbol is the one with scattered dots. When you look at your graph, does it look like the number of eruptions has been increasing, decreasing, or about the same?
The number of volcanic eruptions looks about the same over time.
There is a mathematical way to assess whether the trend has been increasing, decreasing, or staying the same. Excel can calculate a trendline from your data that shows you the relationship
between your X and Y axes. The easiest way to do this is to right-click any data point on your graph and select “Add Trendline…”, select the “Linear” option and also select “Display R-
squared value on chart”. The R-squared value is a statistical measure of the relationship between your x-axis and y-axis. The scale is 0 to 1 with 1 being a good correlation and 0 being no correlation. For our purposes, we are interested in figuring out if the number of volcanic eruptions has been increasing over time. If that is true, you would expect a good correlation between time and the number of eruptions (i.e. the number of eruptions each year should be increasing from 1960 to 2022), and your R-squared value would be close to 1. If there is no correlation between the number of eruptions and time, your R-squared value would be close to
0. You may find you need to click and drag the R-squared value into a more visible location.
20. What was your R-squared value?
0.0262
21. Statistically speaking, has the number of volcanic eruptions been increasing since 1960?
No, because the R -Squared value is close to 0.
22. Paste your graph showing the trendline and R-squared value. Be sure to have properly labeled your graph.
[paste image here]
Hurricanes
Now go to the last tab labeled “Hurricanes”. The data on this sheet is showing you the number of tropical storms and hurricanes each year since 1900 in the Atlantic Ocean.
23.
Which year had the highest number of storms?
This is a large data set with 124 data points, so you’ll need to sort the data to figure this out (you do not have to manually search the data for the highest number). Highlight column B by clicking on “B”, go to the
data tab, and then select the sorting symbol. For lowest to highest, select this symbol .
Be sure “expand the selection” is selected so it keeps the correct year with the number of storms. This will sort the data set by the number of storms.
2020
24. Which year had the lowest number of storms?
1914
25. What was the total number of storms between 1900 and 2023?
1352
26. What is the average number of storms per year (round to the nearest whole number)?
10.9
Sort your data by year by selecting column A and using the same sorting symbol as question #22. You’ll need to do this before moving to the next question.
27. Visualize the hurricane data set by creating a scatter plot with lines and markers as you did for the volcano section and create a linear trendline. Paste your graph below.
[paste image here]
28. What is your R-squared value?
0.2796
29. Using this data, does it look like the number of storms has been increasing over time?
Yes it does appear the number of storms has been increasing over time.
30.
Critical Thinking:
Some people have suggested the number of tropical storms and hurricanes has been increasing. Come up with two reasons that can explain why the number of storms looks like they’re increasing. (We will investigate this later in the semester)
This increase in storms could be due to the polar ice caps melting because of global warming. Another reason the storms look like they’re increasing is due to the increase of coverage for the storms due to technological advancements.
There are other statistical calculations we can make with this data to support your answers, but
this is not a statistics class. That’s it for the Excel portion. You now have the skills to complete most of the Excel work in future assignments.
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