GEOS 102
An Unfinished Planet Spring 2025
Division III

Earth is an evolving planet. The pace of plate tectonics may be imperceptibly slow but earthquakes and volcanic eruptions caused by shifting plates disrupt civilizations. In a geological time frame, nothing on Earth is permanent: ocean basins open and close, mountains rise and fall, continental masses collide and pull apart. There is a message here for all of us who live, for an infinitesimally brief time, on the moving surface of the globe. This course uses the plate tectonics model–one of the fundamental scientific accomplishments of the 20th century–to interpret the processes and products of a changing Earth. The emphasis will be on mountain systems (on land and beneath the oceans) as expressions of plate interactions. Specific topics include the rocks and structures of modern and ancient mountain belts, the patterns of global seismicity and volcanism, the nature of the Earth’s interior, the changing configurations of continents and ocean basins through time, and, in some detail, the formation of the Appalachian Mountain system and the geological assembly of New England. Readings will be from a physical geology textbook and primary sources. This course is in the Solid Earth group for the Geosciences major.