EARTH 540
Essentials of Oceanography

Course Schedule

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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

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
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
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
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
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
Activities
  • Problem sets, Weekly discussion
  • End-of-unit quiz (open Feb 22-24)

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
Activities
  • Problem sets, Weekly discussion
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
Activities
  • Problem sets, Weekly discussion
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
Activities
  • Problem sets, Weekly discussion
Lesson 8: Capstone Project
Date Start by: 18 Apr 2016
Activities
  • Capstone Project outline due Mar 25
  • Project due Apr 22
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
Activities
  • Reading, Weekly discussion
  • End-of-unit quiz; (Open Apr 27-29)
  • Lesson 9 due on Apr 29