Introduction

This textbook was designed to give the students of the Maricopa Community County Colleges District a free, interactive resource to accompany the class GLG101IN: Physical Geology, as part of a 2021 grant at Scottsdale Community College to develop high-quality, open ebooks for the classroom and public use.

Much has been written about geologic processes, and this text was remixed and expanded from a variety of sources:

1. Primarily, this book was cloned from Steven Earle’s (2019) Physical Geology, 2nd Edition.  https://opentextbc.ca/physicalgeology2ed/  Because, if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.  Earle’s book is focused on the geology of Canada, and as such, most of the pictures and examples have been changed to reflect the geology of the arid southwestern USA.
2.  Additional chapters were taken from: Dynamic Planet: Exploring Geologic Disasters and Environmental Change.  This text was developed in collaboration between Dr. Charlene Estrada (South Mountain Community College), Dr. Carolina Michel (Chandler-Gilbert Community College), and Dr. Merry Wilson (Scottsdale Community College) to better engage local students in learning hazards and issues in geosciences and environmental sciences.  Chapters have been attributed to individual authors and cited where revisions have occurred.

This work uses a place-based pedagogy by including local examples of Arizona geology and hazards entitled “Backyard Geology” within each chapter to give students a sense of connection to the learning material. Furthermore, the text written for a non-science major with keywords highlighted and defined within a glossary, and the text is interspersed by example images, videos, and H5P interactive assessments.

This textbook fulfills the MCCCD mission of providing access to higher education for 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 merry.wilson@scottsdalecc.edu

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