2011 Annual Science Report
Arizona State University Reporting | SEP 2010 – AUG 2011
EPO Activity: EPO Informal Education, Task 1B: Virtual Field Trip to Shark Bay, Western Australia
Project Progress
In addition to work on the Flinders Virtual Field Trip (VFT), we started work on a new VFT to Shark Bay, Western Australia during the reporting period.
Shark Bay, Western Australia
For two weeks in June 2011, teams from ASU, MIT, the Australian Centre for Astrobiology, University of Connecticut, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Curtin University (Australia) visited sites within the Shark Bay World Heritage Area in Western Australia. A VFT team led by Mr. Bruce (ASU) focused on the collection of imagery and video footage needed to develop a new Shark Bay VFT (Figure 1), while a second science team lead by researchers from MIT and Woods Hole collected specimens of living stromatolites for a number of research projects (Figures 2-3). The video and imagery has been used to create a new Shark Bay VFT protoype that is being tested in Dr. Ariel Anbar’s “Habitable Worlds” undergraduate class at ASU.