GEOS 314
Sediment Records of Climate Change Spring 2016
Division III
Cross-listed ENVI 314 / MAST 314
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

Sediments and sedimentary rocks may appear unassuming but they are an extraordinarily rich archive of Earth’s geologic history, including Earth’s past climate. In the first half of this class, we will survey techniques of stratigraphic analysis and dating of sediments, including paleomagnetism, seismic stratigraphy, biozones, and radioisotope methods. In the second half, we will survey the wide variety of methods for reconstructing past climate from sediments including the composition and texture of the sediment, the assemblage of fossils, and the elemental and isotope chemistry of sediment components. These are used to reconstruct many climatic parameters from the past, including the temperature and salinity of seawater, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, ocean circulation, sea ice distribution, global terrestrial ice volume, terrestrial biomes, and in some cases, seasonal to interannual climate variability. In labs and independent projects, students will apply these tools to a collection of sediment samples spanning eight million years from the warm Miocene to the present collected from the Monterey Bay region by GEOS 25 during WSP. Students who register for this class are strongly encouraged to take GEOS 25, and are given enrollment preference in that course.
The Class: Format: lecture/lab
Limit: 10
Expected: 10
Class#: 3150
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: evaluation based on weekly papers, discussions, and a research project
Extra Info: may not be taken on a pass/fail basis
Prerequisites: GEOS 104 or GEOS 210 or GEOS 215 or permission of instructor
Enrollment Preferences: Geosciences and Environmental Geosciences majors
Distributions: Division III
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ENVI 314 Division III MAST 314 Division III GEOS 314 Division III
Attributes: ENVI Natural World Electives
ENVS Group EB-B Electives
ENVS Group EG-C Electives
MAST Interdepartmental Electives

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