GEOS2115/2915: Oceans, Coasts & Climate Change

GEOS2115: Oceans, Coasts & Climate Change (6cp)
GEOS2915: Oceans, Coasts & Climate Change (Advanced) (6cp)
Dr Peter Cowell and A/Prof Dietmar Müller

Session: February
Prerequisites: 48 credit points from Junior Units of Study
Assumed Knowledge: GEOS1001/GEOS1901 or GEOS1002/GEOS1902 or GEOS1003/1903 or GEOL1002/GEOL1902 or GEOL1501
Prohibitions: MARS2005/2905; MARS2006/2906
Classes: GEOS2115 and GEOS2915 requires attendance at a three day residential field School during the week before lectures commence: Monday 25 to Wednesday 27 February, 2008, inclusive. 26 x 1 hour lectures, 6 x 1 hour workshops, 1 x 8 hour field work, 1 x 16 hour field school (1 x weekend)
Assessment: 1 written report (20% of total marks), 4 x web-based on-line reports (20% of total marks), 1 seminar presentation: field school (10% of total marks), 1 x 2 hour exam (50% of total marks)

This Unit of Study introduces core concepts about how the formation of ocean basins and their influence on climate govern the development of coasts and continental margins. These concepts provide a framework for understanding the geographic variation of coasts, continental shelves and sediment accumulations in the deep ocean. Ocean-basin evolution is explained in terms of movements within the Earth’s interior and how these movements determine the geometry of ocean basins, and their alpine counterparts, which interact with the global circulation of the ocean and atmosphere. Affects of this interaction on energy regimes and hydrology are described in accounting for regional controls that govern supply and dispersal of sediments on continental margins and in ocean basins. These controls include effects on wave climates, wind-driven currents and tidal regimes. These controls also govern environmental conditions determining development of coral reefs and other ecosystems that play a key role in marine sedimentation. The Unit of Study systematically outlines how these factors have played out with climate change to produce the beaches, dunes, estuaries and deltas we see today, as well as the less familiar deposits hidden beneath the sea. The Unit also outlines how knowledge of responses to climate change in the past allow us to predict responses of coasts to accelerated climate change occurring now and in the future due to the industrial greenhouse effect. Overall therefore, the Unit aims to provide familiarity with fundamental phenomena central to the study of marine geoscience, introduced through process-oriented explanations. The Unit of Study is structured around problem-based project work, for which lectures provide the theoretical background.