Introduction

This textbook was designed to give the students of the Maricopa Community County Colleges District a free, interactive laboratory resource to accompany the class GLG101IN Physical Geology, as part of the 2022 Maricopa Open Digital (MOD) Press Grant to develop high-quality, open ebooks for the classroom and public use.

This text was developed by Dr. Charlene Estrada (South Mountain Community College) to better engage local students in learning the basic concepts and issues in geosciences.

This textbook fulfills the MCCCD mission of providing access to higher education for a diverse community of learners. Videos are subtitled, and images are given alternative descriptive text. Furthermore, this resource is open and accessible to the public beyond the classroom, and materials within can be duplicated, altered, and reused with proper attribution. Unless otherwise noted within each chapter of the textbook, or in individual media, this body of work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Before making any of the educational content or resources freely available to the public, the authors have reviewed all material extensively to determine the correct ownership of the material and obtain appropriate attribute licenses to make the material available. The authors will promptly remove any material that is determined to be infringing on the rights of others. If you believe that any portion of the educational content violates copyright laws, let the authors know right away at charlene.estrada@southmountaincc.edu

To file a formal notification, you must be either the copyright owner of the work or an individual authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner. Your notification must include:

• Identification of the copyrighted work, or, in the case of multiple works at the same location, a representative list of such works at that site.
• Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of infringing activity. You must include sufficient information, such as a specific URL or other specific identification, for us to locate the material.
• Information for us to be able to contact the claimant (e.g., email address, phone number).
• A statement that the claimant believes that the use of the material has not been authorized by the copyright owner or an authorized agent.
• A statement that the information in the notification is accurate and that the claimant is, or is authorized to act on behalf of, the copyright owner.

(This notification process and language were adapted from Lumen Learning and the MIT OpenCourseWare Terms of Use, licensed CC BY NC-SA.)