Class Website:
http://www.ess.washington.edu/Surface/Glaciology/COURSES/ESS203/info.html
Instructor:
Ed Waddington
Professor, Dept. of Earth and Space Sciences
715 ATG Bldg
TEL: 543-4585
email: edw@ess.washington.edu
Proposed Office Hours: Monday 10:30 - 11:30, or by arrangement at other times
TA:
Joe MacGregor
Graduate student, Dept. of Earth and Space Sciences
219 ATG Bldg
TEL: 616-5393
email: joemac@ess.washington.edu
This course examines the role that glaciers and polar ice sheets play in altering climate, landscape and sea level both locally and globally, and the role that glaciers play in teaching us about past climate and environmental changes, both natural and human-caused. Glaciers slowly advance and retreat in response to past and present climate changes, and their weight can push down the earth's crust; as a result, changes in Earth's glacial environments today can tell us about climate in the past. Layers of buried glacier ice from earlier climate periods also contain a rich and detailed history of the atmosphere and the climate in the past, unlike records found anywhere else. We examine theories of the Ice Ages, and look at evidence for glaciers that covered Puget Sound. Finally, we consider how glaciers might change in the future, with accompanying impacts on our society.
COURSE READING MATERIALS:
TEXT:
Frozen Earth - the once and future story of ice ages D. Macdougall.
U. California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. 2004.
OPTIONAL ADDITIONAL TEXT: Glaciers and environmental change. Atle Nesje and Svein Olaf Dahl. London : Arnold ; New York : co-published in the U.S. by Oxford University Press, 2000.
- Publications from scientific articles written for general audiences
with some scientific background (such as this class),
e.g. journals Nature and Science .
The articles that we will discuss during the Quarter
will be available on-line through UW Electronic Reserves.
From the UW homepage, go to Libraries, then Course Reserves,
Search by Course, and enter "Earth and Space Sciences 203".
To access the reading materials, you need to login with your
UW NetID login and password.
The papers are in .pdf format; you can print them from acroread.
SCHEDULE
We will meet 3 times weekly for classes.
JHN 111 09:30 - 10:20
You will attend 1 of 2 lab sections on Tuesday or Thursday
JHN 117 12:30 - 3:20
COURSE STRUCTURE
Classes:
Classes will be a mix of instruction and group discussions.
I will expect you to attend classes and contribute to discussions.
Your preparation will entail some reading and library and/or web research
of topics for discussions.
There will be regular short writing assignments on topics discussed in class.
These assignments will be due at the start of the next class.
To help me to assess your understanding of the course material,
I will read your written work and give you feedback on content and
writing style on each assignment.
Completion of these assignments will contribute significantly to
your Class Participation grade (below).
I will not give you a numerical grade for these assignments.
They will be C/NC; however, if I think that you have missed the major
points in the assignment, I may ask you to revise your answers before you
get credit.
Labs:
Each Lab session will have activities to be discussed and/or carried
out in groups. Activities will include:
- exploring topics from class in greater depth
- finding and using simple numbers to understand the world around us
- taking field trips to see results of glacier action around Seattle
There will be writing assignments associated with each lab.
These exercises can be completed in the lab or finished up as homework.
You are encouraged to work through the exercises as a group.
However, each person will turn in their own answers at class
the following Monday morning.
These Lab assignments will be graded by the TA.
GROUP RESEARCH REPORTS
For research projects in this class, you will form groups with
2 or 3 people in each group.
Each group will start by reading a paper or papers about an issue
involving glaciers and changing environments, and write a collaborative
report of about 6 pages (3000 words equivalent) about the issues involved.
This is the way most scientific papers are written.
Each group is also encouraged to explore or follow up ideas
in directions of your choosing. For example, your basic goal
could be to identify the key elements in the paper that are used to
argue to a conclusion, summarize that argument, and then discuss
implications for the environment and society.
Here are some sample topics:
- Impact of ongoing warming on the ice in the Antarctic Peninsula
- Global warming and the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet
- The great climate flip-flop: can global warming trigger another
ice age soon?
- Ice caps on Mars - (is there a climate record there?)
- Snowball Earth - did the Earth freeze over in late Precambrian time?
- Why are glaciers retreating in Greenland today?
For more information, see the
Project Page .
TESTS:
- There will be no final exam.
- There will be 2 tests during the quarter
WHERE - in the normal class period and room
- after 4 weeks (January 29) and after 8 weeks (February 26)
WHAT - prose answers to 3 questions related to concepts
discussed in class.
Study Questions will be posted a week ahead.a
COURSE GRADES:
25% - class tests (2)
40% - lab projects
15% - group research report
20% - class participation
---
100%
A recurring focus in the class will be the use of simple conceptual models of how the Earth works in order to estimate the relative importance of various Earth processes, and in order to come up with credible estimates of their effects and impacts on our world.
I hope that you will get from this class:
(a) an appreciation of how glaciers and polar ice sheets alter climate,
landscape and sea level in ways that affect our society.
(b) insight into the ways earth scientists can extract a wealth of
information about past environments from measurements on ordinary
materials like ice or wood. Having a good conceptual model of how
the Earth works allows scientists to predict what they should
find in different situations, and thereby confirm expectations, or identify surprises.
(c) an understanding of the power and usefulness of simple arithmetic
in finding approximate answers to environmental questions.
The key is in knowing which numbers you need to know for each question.
(d) a sense of how you can apply these methods to other questions
beyond this course, and beyond science.