Andrew Wickert

Andrew Wickert

McKnight Land-Grant Assistant Professor
Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences
Faculty, Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory
Associate, Institute on the Environment

Shadow Creek: Hillslope and Fluvial Processes

Virtual reality field trip to Shadow Creek, a tributary to the Mississippi in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Learning Goals

  • Gain experience with geomorphic field observations
  • Build an understanding of the links between channel (fluvial) and hillslope processes
  • Note the role of lithology in both fluvial and hillslope processes
  • Observe changes in a river (and the surrounidng hillslopes) from headwaters to mouth

Pre-activity video introduction

These YouTube videos will be enabled for VR viewers or to view on a smartphone or tablet in which your movement will direct what you see. Indeed, they look better and are a lot more fun on those platforms, which allow you to move your device (and maybe your head too) to look around and see the landscape.

RESOLUTION: On my computer, the default resolution is quite low. Consider clicking on the “gear” icon and increasing the resolution to “HD” in order to better make out individual features.

PAUSING: You are still able to pan around the video while it is paused – do so if you want a few more different views of the landscape.

Google Expeditions 3D/VR Field Trip

You may go through the field trip on your computer, but it can be more fun with a phone/tablet or a VR device (including the inexpensive cardboard viewers that work with smartphones).

From your computer

Click on the image to enter.

VR field trip

From a smartphone, tablet, or other device capable of running Google Expeditions

*Note: pressing “view in VR” also allows you to move your device to see where you are looking. This gives you some of the experience even if you don’t have a headset.

  1. Place your phone down on a surface. It will pretend that it is in a VR viewer.
  2. Press the square/frame button.
  3. Enjoy!

VR field trip

Post-field-trip reflection (DELIVERABLE: 45 points total)

Write one paragrpah in response to each of the following three prompts (three paragraphs in total). Your answer to each question is worth 15 points.

  1. What observations would you use to decide whether a hillslope is most likely evolving via gradual creep or via mass-wasting processes? Include as many lines of evidence as you can think of. Describe how such a characterization may relate to other aspects of the region, including geology, hazard, and past (and/or ongoing) events that could have shaped the landscape.

  2. Although you may not know too much about rivers yet at this point, this is a chance for you to speculate on them. What do you think caused Shadow Creek to incise into bedrock? Why do you think that the falls are located where they are, both vertically and horizontally?

  3. Many hillslopes feature curved trees. Describe how these curved trees may indicate rates and directions of hillslope creep. Devise and present a method to use tree curvature (and perhaps other characteristics) to estimate how quickly material is moving downslope.

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