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June 1, 1998 E-mail: geotimes@agiweb.org

Teaching Millions at Once

ALEXANDRIA, VA — What does ocean research have to do with distance education? Everything when it comes to JASON Project IX, Oceans of Earth and Beyond. In the June issue of Geotimes, Robert D. Ballard, discoverer of the remains of the Titanic, describes the JASON Project, a program that brought millions of teachers and students across the country along for a series of oceanographic experiments March 16–27 via a web site and daily live broadcasts over the Internet. Ballard founded the JASON Project in 1989. "Young people are our future leaders in government, industry, science, and technology," he says in Geotimes. "It is crucial that we instill in them a desire to learn and a hunger for knowledge, especially for science and technology."

Also in the June issue, Glenn Borchardt, a consulting soil scientist in Berkeley, Calif., describes soil tectonics, a field that combines paleoseismology (the study of prehistoric earthquakes) and pedology (the study of soils). "The complex interactions involving these dynamic processes may record a history of fault offset and other ground movements that can be discovered in no other way" than through soil tectonics, Borchardt writes in Geotimes. He discusses the techniques used in soil tectonics and the geologic processes that make possible "the study of the interactions between soil formation and tectonism."

The June issue also features a look at storms and their affects on beach towns. Residents of the New Jersey Shore continue to deal with the increasing problem of coastal erosion. In "Nor'easter," a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer describes the damage that past nor'easters have wreaked on New Jersey beaches. These winter storms can rob developed beaches of tens of thousands of cubic yards of beach in a season. Beach renourishment is the best prevention of coastal flooding, but is increasingly expensive. Reporter Anthony R. Wood describes the challenges and solutions facing New Jersey shore towns — and other coastal communities — as development confronts Earth's natural processes.

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