Module IV blog

Essential Question:

How do stories of cataclysmic events help inform students about geosciences and cultures?

Students are instantly interested in stories that involve catastrophe. You have only to look at the typical evening news broadcast to know that this trait is simple human nature. Using stories of cataclysmic events provides a "hook" that engages students instantly. Once the students are engaged, you can sneak some actual learning in before they know what's hit them.

The wonderful example provided during this module was the 1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami, and specifically, the video interview of the father and son who miraculously rode it out on their fishing boat. Once students are engaged by this amazing story, their teacher could transition to the history of tsunami in Lituya Bay, including why it is geologically such a magnet for these enormous and destructive events. The images in Google Earth showing the tsunami swash (lighter green in the photo) along the Bay also provide a powerful connection between the story and current reality for students. (Image captured from Google Earth.)

I have some decent basic knowledge of geology, but the Lituya Bay scenario taught me something new about the less obvious causes of tsunami. I especially loved how Google Earth enabled me to see the diabolical combination of narrow inlet and plate boundary that ensure that Lituya Bay will always be subject to tsunami events. (Image captured from Google Earth.)

There is also an easy tie to the cultural impacts the historic tsunami of Lituya Bay have had. White explorers in the area record that there were settlements of Alaska Natives in 1788. However, by the late 1800's, the settlements had been abandoned, possibly due to destruction by tsunami waves. By the time another tsunami hit in 1936, the only residents of the area were a few white men living on Cenotaph Island. Effectively, the area had become uninhabitable because of the nature of its geology. The Native people who once had lived in Lituya Bay had had to relocate and adapt to a new area, or risk perishing in the unpredictable and dangerous tsunami that plagued the Bay.

Once students are engaged in using Google Earth, it would be easy to extend it as a teaching tool: measuring the Fairweather fault and other objects, and comparing distances with things like the width of the lower 48 to give them a little better perspective on some of the sizes involved. For example, I have lived in Alaska for nearly 20 years, and I never really realized the Aleutian Trench was nearly as wide as the width of lower 48 until I measured it with the Ruler in Google Earth. (Images captured from Google Earth.)


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Stories of cataclysmic geological events in Alaska also have the benefit of being extremely immediate and real to our students. I've often thought that Alaskan geology teachers have an incredible edge over teachers in virtually any other U.S. state (except, possibly, Hawaii). For example, students who have been in South Central for at least a couple of years remember hoping for a free day from school due to volcanic ash from Redoubt. Students who have family who've been here longer have grown up with stories of the 1964 Good Friday earthquake and all its terrible devastation.


The effects of the 1964 earthquake on the town of Valdez would be an excellent capstone lesson to allow students to synthesize their knowledge of geological phenomena and their impact on both the physical landscape and the people who inhabit it. I would have students look at the Google Earth images (left, and below right) of the old Valdez and the new Valdez townsites. Looking at the topography and geology of the area, why might the people of Valdez have decided to move the community after the earthquake and (most especially) the tsunami?