Grasping the Finger Lakes

A teacher in upstate New York has taken advantage of her sabbatical to create a world-usable guide to teaching Earth science using the geology of the Finger Lakes. Part of it is a large collection of images residing on Flickr and part is a group of teaching resources on the Ithaca School District's Blackboard site. Laurie Van Vleet, who put this together, is the subject of a profile in the local paper with the nice lede, "For an eighth-grade Earth science teacher, the Finger Lakes area is a textbook come to life: waterfalls, gorges, rock formations, mineral deposits and evidence of glaciation are all on display." That is all true. I feel a special link because the Finger Lakes region is part of my ancestral grounds, and if my day trip through the area whets your interest, then Van Vleet's resource will take you much deeper.

Finger Lakes on the NY Geologic Map