Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Explore our relationship with our geological habitat, including environmental impacts of mineral extraction and logging; landslides, rockfalls and snow avalanches; wildfires affecting the urban-forest interface; natural and anthropogenic impacts to water quality; earthquakes and tsunamis; and cascading risk. The course includes two 1-day field trips that usually occur on Saturdays. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

Environmental geoscience is an applied branch of Earth Science that examines the relationship between people and their geologic habitat. There will be an emphasis on topics and examples that relate to British Columbia. The course will be writing intensive with an emphasis on communicating your professional recommendations to decision makers.

 

Course Topics

1. Introductory concepts: Environmental Geology, human interaction with the geologic environment (Chapter 1)
2. Introduction to Geomorphology and Glacial and Periglacial Geomorphology (Chapter 4)
3. Terrain analysis and applications to resource development (No chapter readings)
   1. -Terrain Types and Maps
   2. -Terrain Stability Mapping
4. Natural hazards and their mediation
   1. -Mass movements (Chapter 5)
   2. -Floods (Chapter 13)
   3. -Earthquakes (Chapter 6)
   4. -Volcanic Activity (Chapter 7)
   5. -Coastal
   6. -Wild Fires
5. Urban geology
   1. -Hazard and Risk (No Reading)
   2. -Urban Development (No Reading)
   3. -Groundwater utilization (Chapter 11)
   4. -Solid Waste Disposal (Chapter 14)
6. Environmental geochemistry and impacts and consequences of resource extraction (Chapter 8)
7. Global change and its affects (Chapter 15)

Field trips: There are 2 mandatory 1 day fieldtrips.

A course specific supplementary fee will be assessed.

1) Forestry related geoscience, glacial geomorphology/history, terrain types, and landslides,

2) Urban Geology, North Shore Slopes of Burrard Inlet,.

The field sessions will take all day (we will leave campus at 8:00 or 8:30 am and return at 6:30/7:00 PM. Please do not make early evening plans. Students will require basic fieldgear (boots, raingear, fieldbook, etc.), a lunch and must have some device to take pictures, a camera is suggested (preferable water resistant!) (phones don’t always work, especially in the rain, if using a phone, bring a back up power source). One of the most useful samples that a geoscientist takes is the documentary photo. Each student is to prepare an ~15-20 cm high scale card with their name on it (A fieldbook with a scale on it and with your full name clearly written on it will do). This “scale” will appear in each photograph within reason (not required on landscape shots, since it won’t really work, please try and remember this). It will indicate scale (always necessary in a documenting photograph) and also to assure the field trip leader that students are getting the practice in taking their own documentary photographs (no sharing of photographs is allowed). You will also hand in your field notes with your field report. You must hand in your original fieldnotes (no rewriting, no erasing). There is no audio taping or videoing allowed.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Environmental Geoscience is a writing intensive course and thus the distribution of marks reflects the greater emphasis on writing. As a future Professional Geoscientist, effective communication with non-geoscientists is among the most important skills required of an environmental geoscientist.

Writing will be evaluated in the following ways:

Quick writes are low stakes writing exercises done in class to solidify key concepts that are covered.

Lab Reports- several of the labs will be geared towards mimicking the types of reports you will be writing when you become professional geoscientists.

Field trip report- there will be a fieldtrip report for the first fieldtrip, it is a traditional report with complete stop descriptions tied to photos. There will also be an emphasis on your field note taking. For the second fieldtrip there will be a photoessay; you have to explain the stop with just figures and photos with concise figure captions. More on this later

Grading

Materials

RECOMMENDED READING: