Current course offerings

Please Note: Course profiles marked as not available may still be in development.

Course description

The course is designed to provide third year Earth Science and Coast and Ocean Science students with knowledge of linkages between marine geoscience and plate tectonics. Plate tectonics is the unifying theory of Earth¿s evolution and it underpins the growth of ocean basins and their destruction at convergent plate margins. Fragments of ancient ocean crust are preserved on land as tectonically emplaced ophiolites. Submarine geomorphology and sediments deposited in the ocean basins (made up of sediment from land and biological organisms) provide a history of past changes in ocean currents and the carbon cycle, linked to global climate change and tectonic processes. This course is interdisciplinary and provides students a valuable opportunity to synthesise disciplinary knowledge in Earth and Marine Sciences from diverse sources including sedimentology, paleontology, petrology, structural geology, geophysics and geochemistry.