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Module Title
LH Sedimentary Basin Archives of Environmental Crises
School
School of Geog Earth & Env Sci
Department
Earth and Environ Sciences
Module Code
03 41138
Module Lead
Stephen Jones
Level
Honours Level
Credits
20
Semester
Semester 1
Pre-requisites
Co-requisites
Restrictions
None
Contact Hours
Lecture-12 hours
Practical Classes and workshops-9 hours
Supervised time in studio/workshop-3 hours
Fieldwork-48 hours
Guided independent study-128 hours Total: 200 hours
Exclusions
Description
Earth's history is punctuated by environmental and biotic crises. Unravelling their causes in terms of interplay between tectonic and climatic drivers is important, especially as they provide context for human-induced change.
To establish the causes of past environmental crises, we must understand not only how to read the story of environmental change in the rock record, but also how the sedimentary basins that contain the rocks formed – only then can we disentangle global signals from local changes.
We focus on environmental changes that accompany large igneous province emplacement, and environmental changes that accompany isolation of ocean basins. These topics are introduced in classroom practical exercises, before we travel to south-eastern Spain to examine rocks that record the events or their analogues. The assessment draws together the practical results, field observations and wider reading.
The course includes research-led teaching and breaking news from our ongoing projects evaluating tectonic versus climatic drivers of past climate change.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students should be able to:
Evaluate tectonic versus climatic controls on environmental change.
Evaluate local versus global scales of environmental change.
Refine advanced-level field skills in analysis of sedimentary, volcanic and palaeo-environmental signals within sedimentary basin archives.
Synthesize analyses of field data, findings from academic literature, and recent results from GEES-led research projects, and appreciate uncertainties in the resulting models.
