Course Schedule

Fall 2009

Spring 2010

Previous Courses

Glaciers and Climate

GEOL294

In this course we will investigate the importance of glaciers and ice sheets to landscape evolution and global environmental change, based on an understanding of their formation, structure, mass and energy exchange, and dynamics. In addition, we will focus on understanding how the Earth’s climate system works, and how it has changed over geologic time. Students will learn about causes and evidence for global glaciations over the last 65 million years, and will examine the ways that scientists have used glaciers to deduce climate change. Understanding recent climate change and anthropogenic forcing to current climate will be a major focus of the course. Students will learn to examine and interpret field data, and will use simple models of ice dynamics to understand glacier behavior. This course includes a three-day field trip to examine Minnesota’s glacial history.