← Earth Systems Science ← Module 1 Lab Index
Earth Systems Science · Module 1 · Station Lab

The Mapping Studio

4 stations ~45 minutes

The same coastline looks different on a topographic map, a satellite image, and an elevation model — each view reveals evidence the others hide.

Phase 0 · The phenomenon

One coastline, three pictures

The same 2.0 km by 1.2 km stretch of coast as a true-colour image, a topographic map with 10 m contours, and a shaded elevation model. North is up.

Three maps of one coastline. Left: a true-colour image with dark green forest on a hill, light green fields, an olive marsh in a valley at the bottom right, a tan beach and blue sea on the right. Middle: a contour map with closely spaced rings on the hill, a dense bundle of lines at the sea cliff, and few lines on the flat plateau. Right: a grey shaded-relief image where the hill, the cliff, the valley and a faint straight north-south step in the forest are all visible.

A survey team is mapping two kilometres of coast. The satellite photo shows forest, a marsh and a beach, but no hint of how steep anything is. The topographic map shows a hill and a sea cliff, but nothing about what grows there.

The elevation model shows something neither of the others does: a straight step about three metres high running north to south through the forest, far from today's shore. Nobody had mapped it before.

In this lab you will learn to read each kind of map — and decide which view answers which question.

Essential question

Why does one coastline look so different on a topographic map, a satellite image and an elevation model — and how do you choose the view that answers your question?

What this lab works toward

This is a skills lab: it builds the map, profile, scale and remote-sensing reading that every later Earth Systems Science lab uses. The course map assigns it no NGSS performance expectation of its own.

The stations

  1. Contour ReaderWhat does the spacing of contour lines tell you about the land?
  2. Profile BuilderHow does vertical exaggeration change the slopes you see in a profile?
  3. Map ScaleWhich map scale shows more detail, and how do you turn map centimetres into kilometres?
  4. Remote Sensing LayersWhich view reveals the buried three-metre shoreline step, and why do the others miss it?

Each station runs the same loop: predict before you see any data, investigate the model and record runs, reveal what the measurements show, then explain the gap between your prediction and the result. A claim-evidence-reasoning checkpoint and an exit ticket close the lab.