As part of a program of curriculum development in the expanding area of environmental geoscience, a set of interdisciplinary, field-based, courses are taught from the Geologic Field Station in southwestern Montana. The setting for this field instruction is a Demonstration Watershed whose headwaters is a large snow catchment and whose lower drainage is in an arid structural basin. The Demonstration Watershed has been established as part of a cooperative effort involving the university, State, and Federal agencies, as well as the local water district and ranchers. Having the students become part of this endeavor provides a balanced perspective on the problems they are addressing and the need for reasonable, practical solutions that they are helping to create as they go on in their professional careers. Technical phases of the course involve data collection from a suite of permanent instruments deployed within the watershed. Students enrolled in the course participate in calibration of permanent equipment arrays and undertake additional measurements in watershed sub-areas and along grid surveys. Reliable, state-of-the-art portable equipment is necessary to complete these aspects of the courses. To ensure that the location and final compilation of the data are both accurate and also at the leading edge of technology, the project incorporates GPS receivers for location and a GIS system for data display into the students' work. This project provides additional field equipment and portable lap-top computers that will insure state-of-the-art training for the next generation of field-based environmental geoscientists.
