Search: Geography, Climate Change

Earth's climatic changes have been substantial throughout geologic history, and these changes constitute fascinating natural experiments that reveal much about the earth's climate systems and their capacity for change. In this course we will review important methods for past climate reconstruction and also current knowledge of past climate changes throughout earth's history, with an emphasis on those of the Quaternary. Methods to be explored include analyses of physical, geochemical, and paleontologic characteristics of marine sediments, coral reefs, coastal sediments, lake sediments, tree rings, and ice cores.

The global pattern of climate, landforms, vegetation, and soils. The relative importance of natural and human-induced change, global warming, forest clearance, accelerated soil erosion, glacial/postglacial climate change and its consequences.