Sara Harris

• PhD
• Professor at University of British Columbia

The relationship between climate change understanding and other variables, including risk perception, beliefs, and worldviews, is an important consideration as we work to increase public attention to climate change. Despite significant effort to develop rigorous mechanisms for measuring affective variables, measurement of climate change understandi...

We evaluated influences on the climate change risk perceptions of undergraduate students in an introductory Earth Science course. For this sample, domain-specific content knowledge about climate change was a significant predictor of students’ risk perception of climate change while cultural worldviews (individualism, hierarchy) and political orient...

We assessed undergraduates’ representations of the greenhouse effect, based on student-generated concept sketches, before and after a 30-min constructivist lesson. Principal component analysis of features in student sketches revealed seven distinct and coherent explanatory models including a new Molecular Details model. After the lesson, which desc...

We developed a classroom observation protocol for quantitatively measuring student engagement in large university classes. The Behavioral Engagement Related to Instruction (BERI) protocol can be used to provide timely feedback to instructors as to how they can improve student engagement in their classrooms. We tested BERI on seven courses with diff...

Climate change is a pervasive and challenging phenomenon that takes on a variety of meanings and frames, each of which suggests different victims, villains, and solutions. New tools are emerging that may facilitate a reframing, or at least the collaborative coproduction, of the climate change conversation. Web‐based social media have provided a new...

Geologic time is a crucial component of any geoscientist's training. Essential knowledge of geologic time includes rates of geologic processes and the associated time it takes for geologic features to form, yet measuring conceptual thinking abilities in these domains is challenging. We describe development and initial application of the Landscape I...

We set out to identify the benefits and drawbacks of using more than one instructor to teach single section science courses at a large research university. Nine courses were investigated involving widely differing subjects and levels. Teaching models included: sequential teaching with two to six instructors each covering only their own modules, two...

We conducted a small-scale study to investigate if a brief timely intervention focusing on specific study strategies would improve student performance in university science courses. We targeted low-performing students after the first midterm exam in two courses (enrollments of 67 and 185) with different student populations, one with students in a v...

There is growing interest within the geoscience education community both in the general application of concept tests to student learning, and in their applications to specific concepts such as geological time. We report on results of using a new instrument in second year and fourth year geoscience courses which assesses knowledge of landscapes, the...

Ocean Drilling Program Sites 1123 and 1124 provide an unprecedented 12 m.y. record of major rhyolitic eruptions from the Coromandel and Taupo volcanic zones of New Zealand. Macroscopic tephras (n = 197) were dated using magnetostratigraphy, supplemented by geochemical correlation with subaerial tephra, isothermal plateau fission-track ages, and orb...

The main inflow of deep water to the Pacific is via a deep western boundary current. As the current passes along the continental margin off eastern New Zealand, it receives much terrigenous sediment, which, together with the biogenic pelagic supply, has been reworked into a suite of large drifts. Ocean Drilling Program Site 1123 on the North Chatha...

Is tectonic uplift or climate change the primary driving force behind continent-scale erosion? Here we examine these two hypotheses for tropical South America by comparing a high-resolution record of terrigenous sediment accumulation rates from the western tropical Atlantic Ocean with continental tectonic reconstructions and both low-latitude and h...

The production of cold, deep waters in the Southern Ocean is an important factor in the Earth's heat budget. The supply of deep water to the Pacific Ocean is presently dominated by a single source, the deep western boundary current east of New Zealand. Here we use sediment records deposited under the influence of this deep western boundary current...

Copyright 1999 by the American Geophysical Union Diffuse reflectance records from Fern Drift in the North Atlantic faithfully record sediment percent carbonate. A high-resolution, reflectance-based age model for these sediments derived from an orbitally tuned age model for western equatorial Atlantic, Ceara Rise sediments was generated by spectral...

Terrigenous sediments from Ceara Rise in the western tropical Atlantic Ocean record Pleistocene Amazon Basin climate variability. Iron oxides and oxyhydroxides in this region originate mainly from chemically leached Amazon lowland soils. Concentrations of goethite and hematite in the terrigenous fraction consistently peak during transitions from gl...

Diffuse reflectance records from Feni Drift in the North Atlantic faithfully record sediment percent carbonate. A high-resolution, reflectance-based age model for these sediments derived from an orbitally tuned age model for western equatorial Atlantic, Ceara Rise sediments was generated by spectral frequency mapping. Power spectra of the Feni Drif...

Calcium carbonate percentages at Þve Ceara Rise sites were estimated at 1- to 2-k.y. intervals over the past 5 m.y., using reßectance spectroscopy and magnetic susceptibility proxies. From these estimates and detailed correlations between sites, gra- dients of calcite and terrigenous sediment accumulation rates in a depth transect of sites reveal v...

Synthetic records of percent CaCO 3 , carbonate mass accumulation, and noncarbonate (terrigenous) mass accumulation are developed for late Neogene portions of Ceara Rise Sites 925 -929. Shipboard measurements of natural gamma emissions and magnetic susceptibility, collected at 3-to 10-cm intervals at each site, are combined with equally high resolu...

During Leg 138, we measured reflectance spectra in the visible and near-infrared bands (455-945 nm) every few centimeters on split core surfaces from eastern tropical Pacific Ocean sediments. Here, we evaluate predictions of the content of biogenic calcite, biogenic opal, and nonbiogenic sediments from the reflectance spectra. For Sites 844 through...

Establishing true depths of recovered sediments is critical to determining sedimentation rates for high-resolution paleoclimatic studies. We have corrected the composite depth scale, which accounts for the entire continuous sedimentary sequence, so that sediment depths are consistent with logging depths, or "true" depths. We accomplished this by ta...

Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 138 was designed to study the late Neogene paleoceanography of the equatorial Pacific Ocean at time scales of thousands to millions of years. Crucial to this objective was the acquisition of continuous, high-resolution sedimentary records. It is well known that between successive advanced piston corer (APC) cores, p...

During Leg 138, we measured reflectance spectra in the visible and near-infrared bands (455-945 nm) every few centimeters on split core surfaces from eastern tropical Pacific Ocean sediments. Here, we evaluate predictions of the content of biogenic calcite, biogenic opal, and nonbiogenic sediments from the reflectance spectra. For Sites 844 through...

Large-scale tectonic uplift is often assumed to drive continental erosion rates. An alternate view suggests that climate change is the primary driving force behind erosion. Here we examine these two hypotheses in tropical South America by comparing high-resolution records of offshore terrigenous accumulation rates, with continental tectonic reconst...