EARTH 540: Essentials of Oceanography for Educators
EARTH 540 Course Schedule
Below you will find a summary of the learning activities for this course and the associated time frames. This course is 13 weeks in length, beginning with an orientation week.
Course Orientation
Date |
11 Jan 2016 |
Activities |
- Personalize your Canvas space
- Add an address for your Canvas e-mail
- Login to this Web site
- Introduce yourself and meet the rest of the class!
- Take the Course Information Quiz
- Feel free to start Lesson 1 at any time. It's a good one to get a head start on.
- This lesson is due prior to the start of the next lesson
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Unit I: Creating the Seas: Ocean Basins and Water
Lesson 1: The Water Planet: Earth and the Goldilocks Principle
Date |
Start by: 18 Jan 2016 |
Lesson |
- Venus, Earth and Mars—Earth is just right
- Ocean origins: inner rumblings or cosmic slam?
- Coevolution of oceans and life
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Activities |
- Note that Lesson 1 is extensive. Get an early start
- Weekly discussion, Calculations
- Activity 1 is due Jan 22
- This lesson is due prior to the start of the next lesson
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Lesson 2: Living on an Island: Origin of Ocean Basins and Sea Floor Morphology
Date |
Start by: 1 Feb 2016 |
Lesson |
- Hot spots and volcanic arc edifices: building islands and an island change.
- Motion under the ocean: plate tectonics and the changing face of Earth
- Earthquakes & tsunami!
- Continental margins
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Activities |
- Note that Lesson 2 is extensive. Get an early start
- Weekly discussion, Calculations
- Activity 1 is due Feb 5
- This lesson is due prior to the start of the next lesson
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Lesson 3: From Rock to Salt
Date |
Start by: 15 Feb 2016 |
Lesson |
- Ice, water, and vapor
- Salt as the commodity and the age of the oceans
- Latent heat and heat capacity
- Water as the universal solvent
- Why the sea is bitter
- It’s all about cycles: from vapor to rain to snow to rivers and the ocean.
- Geochemical residence time
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Activities |
- Problem sets, Weekly discussion
- End-of-unit quiz (open Feb 22-24)
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Unit II: A Global Balancing Act: Ocean-Atmosphere-Continent Interactions
Lesson 4: The Global Thermostat. The Ocean-Atmosphere-Climate Connection
Date |
Start by: 22 Feb 2016 |
Lesson |
- Solar energy, pressure and wind belts
- Redistributing Earth’s heat, wind and currents
- Coriolis: the Earth turns and momentum is conserved!
- Ekman transport—the spiral path
- Unceasing motion and ocean gyres
- Sailing the Seven Seas and how to get from here to there in a boat
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Activities |
- Problem sets, Weekly discussion
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Lesson 5: The Sea is Rising, the Sea is Rising
Date |
Start by: 29 Feb 2016 |
Lesson |
- Buying beach property? How long do you plan to keep it?
- Surf’s up! Waves from deep to shallow and top to bottom
- Currents and sand transport. The beaches are moving
- Reflection and dissipation: The seasonal beach
- The sea also rises: the future coastline of Eastern North America
- Global warming: implications for glacial melting and sea level
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Activities |
- Problem sets, Weekly discussion
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Lesson 6: Tides Turning and the Planetary Connection
Date |
Start by: 14 Mar 2016 Due by: 27 Mar 2016 |
Lesson |
- Fishing the tide from the Bay of Fundy to Mont Saint Michelle
- A matter of gravity, orbit and rotation: Earth’s attraction to the sun and moon
- Time and tides: tide charts and their interpretation
- Dynamic theory and the amphidromic system
- Back to the Bay of Fundy: energy from tides?
|
Activities |
- End-of-unit quiz (open Mar 28-Mar 30)
- Capstone Project outline due Mar 25
|
Capstone Work Week
Date |
4 Apr 2016 |
Activities |
Capstone Work Week |
Unit III: Life Goes On
Lesson 7: Environmental Issues: Coral Reefs Imperiled, The Dead Zone and Hypoxia
Date |
Start by: 11 Apr 2016 |
Lesson |
- Estuaries and coastal zones as protein resources
- The Chesapeake Bay estuary then and now
- When rivers run too fertile: should I fertilize the lawn?
- Exceeding the limits of tolerance
- Eutrophication and hypoxia
- Red tides and harmful algal blooms (HABs)
- When action is taken there is some good news
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Activities |
- Problem sets, Weekly discussion
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Lesson 8: Capstone Project
Date |
Start by: 18 Apr 2016 |
Activities |
- Capstone Project outline due Mar 25
- Project due Apr 22
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Lesson 9: The Secret Lives of Fishes and the Great Meal Deal
Date |
Start by: 18 Apr 2016 |
Lesson |
- Will we be dining on Jellyfish tonight?
- What can we learn from pirates?
- The oceanic food chain—what does it take to make a Tuna?
- Photosynthetic recipes: Fertilizer from the deep feeds surface crops
- Breathing, predation, salt and slime: a fishes’ life
- How efficient can we be with fishing?
- Moving down the foodchain, moving up ocean’s end
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Activities |
- Reading, Weekly discussion
- End-of-unit quiz; (Open Apr 27-29)
- Lesson 9 due on Apr 29
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