Marine Geology

GLY 5736/GLY4930

Fall 2007

362 Williamson Hall

Office Hours: M,W 3-4, or by appointment

Class: MWF, 4^th (10:40-11:30), 210 Williamson Hall

Mike Perfit (perfit@geology.ufl.edu), John Jaeger (jaeger@geology.ufl.edu), Liz Screaton (screaton@geology.ufl.edu), Dorsey Wanless (dorseyw@ufl.edu), and Alison Fundis (afundis@ufl.edu) have kindly agreed to guest lecture on the topics related to their areas of expertise.

Objectives: Marine Geology is a very broad topic that essentially encompasses all studies of the character and history of the part of the earth within the oceans. To highlight its relevance, that means it is concerned with the geology of approximately three-quarters of the surface of earth today, and an even larger fraction of the earth’s surface at times in the past, as well as the geophysics of the earth’s interior. The diversity of topics that fall within Marine Geology cover processes occurring in the atmosphere all the way down to the core; they cover shallow-water to deep-water processes, and they require knowledge of hard-rock and soft-rock geology. The plan for this course is to first build the ocean basins, which couples tectonic evolution with igneous petrology. Then we will add seawater and study the flow patterns that are critical to nutrient distributions, sediment patterns and climate. Next we will add the sediment cover and discuss methods for dating these materials, as well as alteration of the sediment by fluids. We will end the course by looking at the history of oceanography that is preserved in the marine sedimentary record.

Marine Geology is a very broad topic and I am not an expert on much of the material we will be discussing. For some topics other faculty members will cover their areas of expertise, for others we will need to work through the material together; your input will be valued and appreciated.

Required Texts:

The Ocean Basins: Their Structure and Evolution, 1998, (Second Edition), Open University Course Team, Butterworth-Heinemann, 184pp.

Marine Biogeochemical Cycles, 2005, (Second Edition) Open University Course Team, Butterworth-Heinemann, 130pp.

The Open University books are essentially textbooks that provide details about the basic information we will cover in the course. I will supplement these texts with additional readings, but most of the additional reading will be for class discussions.

Course Plan: The course is going to be composed of a mixture of standard lectures, group learning, literature discussions, and student presentations. I think everyone learns best when they are responsible for some of the learning and when they teach concepts to others; therefore, you will all be responsible for helping me teach some of the material.

Discussions: One to two students will lead each of the literature discussions. Many of the discussion papers are long, detailed review papers. I have reduced the other reading assignments to compensate for the lengthy discussion assignments. The Treatise on Geochemistry was published in 2005 and 2006, and contains a lot of interesting information that will be useful for preparing a discussion. The table of contents is listed on the class website and I can send you a pdf of most of the articles.

The procedure for discussion is that the leader(s) will pose two thought-provoking questions one class prior to the discussion and meet with me the day before the discussion. Each member of the class will be responsible for submitting 2 additional questions to me via email by noon the day before the discussion. I will compile these and send them out to the class. I will hand out additional information about leading discussions, but a few points to keep in mind are that all of the discussion leaders need to contribute, and the leaders are the experts on the papers (not me), but their role is to lead the discussion, which means everyone else must participate. The discussion leaders will be evaluated by the other members of the class. Everyone is expected to do the reading, participate in the discussion, and evaluate the presenter(s).

Exams: Exams are useful tools to force people to review and synthesize material presented in class. There will be a midterm (Oct. 5^th) and final (Dec. 9^th). Each will consist of ~5 short essay questions.

Proposals and Research Papers: Each student will write and present a proposal to do research on some aspect of marine geology. The format of the proposal will be similar to a standard NSF submission with a 10 page limit (double-spaced) plus references. The research proposals need to investigate a specific question or series of related questions. Each proposal will include a project summary, an introduction, the scientific background, the significance/objectives of the project, and the proposed approach. You will not be responsible for budgetary or logistical constraints (for example, at this point it will not be important that your project would require 1 year of ship time and will involve drilling in the international waters of Liberia). The last few classes are set aside for 10-15 min. presentations of these proposals.

Research topics can come from class notes, journal articles, or your research interests. I would be happy to help you define a topic, but would suggest that you have some ideas before you come talk to me. I have no objection to topics that are closely related to your planned thesis research, but many thesis topics are developed by the advisor. I want you to present an idea that is your own. Therefore, it can be related to your thesis, but it must be distinct.

The plan is that you will submit your initial proposal midway through the semester, then you will revise it based on feedback from me and other students in the class and resubmit a few weeks later.

Proposal/Research paper

Wed. Sept.9- written statement of topic (1 paragraph)

Wed. Sept. 30- brief outline and list of at least 5 references

Mon. Oct. 19- first submission due, bring 3 copies to class- one for me and 2 for student reviewers

Mon. Nov. 2- proposals returned

Mon. Nov. 23- revised proposals due (submit one copy only)

Evaluations and reviews: As a scientist, it is important to learn to critically evaluate scientific ideas and presentations. Therefore, everyone will contribute to the evaluation process. Each of you will be responsible for filling out constructive evaluations for every discussion and proposal presentation. In addition, you will be assigned to read and critique two proposals/papers. As in standard proposal reviews, you will remain anonymous, but your comments with be passed on to the author.

Grading:

Problem sets and participation in class activities 20%

Leading a literature discussion 10%

Mid-term exam (Monday, Oct. 5) 20%

Proposal and oral presentation 25% (20/5%)

Evaluations 5%

Final (Nov. 19 ) 20%

Assignments: Please DO NOT send me electronic copies of assignments you need to hand in. I cannot be responsible for printing out everyone’s materials. If something is due on a particular day you need to plan enough time to print a hard copy.

Website: There is a website for this course at http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/emartin/GLY5736F09/GLY5736F09.html . You can find the syllabus and reading assignments at this site. There is also a message board in case I want to pass on information, although it is often easier to just send everyone an email in a class this size. I have a tendency to cover the material relatively quickly, so I will also post my Powerpoint presentations under the “Lectures” link. In the past students have found it very helpful to have copies of these presentations with them during the lecture. It also means you have copies of all of the figures I show in class. My intention is to have the presentations posted by 6:00 the night before class.