Preparation questions

Writing Format for Papers

Greg Wiles
Department of Geology
Office: Scovel 119
The College of Wooster
Wooster, OH 44691 USA
phone: 330-263-2298
gwiles@wooster.edu

Introduction: Global warming and climate change will be the environmental issue to receive the most attention over this century. Understanding how and why climate changes is important for interpreting the past geologic record and evaluating contemporary climate change. After an overview of Earth's ocean-atmosphere system and energy blance, Quaternary (last 2 million years) dating methods and techniques of reconstructing past climates are actively explored through field and lab projects. Students will work with paleoclimate data sets from ocean cores, ice cores, tree-rings, lake cores and corals. Labs will included computer modeling, analysis of time series and field and lab projects extracting lake sediment cores and collecting and processing dendrochronological data.

Preparation questions: At each class I will hand out preparation questions that should be answered for the following class. They are designed to guide the discussion for the next class AND I will occasionally collect them and they will count as one of your quizzes.

Text books: Two texts are required for the class. William F. Ruddiman's text Earth's Climate: Past and Future will give you a good geologic basis for understanding climate science. We will also read various other articles by Ruddiman and his colleagues. The other book is Richard Alley's The Two Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change and Our Future. This book is an excellent reference that integrates the science of abrupt climate change with ice core paleoclimatology.

Both William Ruddiman and Richard Alley will be on campus next semester sponsored by the Environmental Analysis and Action Program funded by the Henry Luce Fondation and by the Osgood Lectureship Fund in Geology. We look forward to their lectures in the Spring.

Schedule of Lecture and Laboratory Sessions

 Lectures in Scovel Hall Room 205, Tuesday & Thursday, 9:30 - 10:50 a.m.

Lab Sessions in Scovel Hall Room 116, Monday, 1:00 - 3:50 p.m. (For lab we will also meet in various labs in Scovel and take field sampling trips)

August 29 & 31

Web Resources: Sign up for the blogs Realclimate.org and Climate Audit.

September 5 & 7

Web Resources: We cored 9 excellent old-growth oaks (Quercus alba) at David Klines farm. This site was dubbed the Kline Farm site (KF). For those of you who are not aware of who David Kline is, you can look at Amazon.com to see reviews etc. of tow of his works Great Posessions and Scratching the Woodchuck. Take a look at the class photogallery to see some of the white oak sampling action.

September 12 & 14

Web Resources:Tree-ring crossdating is the goal for the first few weeks in lab. The classic tree-ring web site is Dr. Henri Grissino-Mayer's Ultimate Tree Ring Web pages.The Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research is a good place to get strating thinking about crossdating.

September 19 & 21

Web Resources:One of the readings for the lab this week will be a tutorial for COFECHA an important computer routine that will help us along in the crosdating and check the quality of our data. This tutorial is written by Henri Grissino-Mayer - the maintainer of the Ultimate Tree Ring Web Pages linked last week.The Tutorial is published in Tree Ring Research the main publication of the Tree Ring Society. You have all signed up for your short in-class presentation on Thursday.

September 26 & 28

Web Resources:The development of radiocarbon dating was major step in the fields of geology, archaeology, biology etc. - this is why Libby earned a Nobel Prize in Chemisty in 1960 for his work. Radiocarbon dating continues to be a mainstay for unraveling the Earth's climate history. We will be sending organic samples from the lake cores to Beta Analytic - our favorite commercial radiocabon dating service.

October 3 & 5

Web Resources:You will use Google and any other resources in the Radiocarbon Calibration Exercise.To download the tree-ring software that we use in the this class go to the Lamont-Doherty Tree Ring Lab (LDEO-TRL) to their outreach and software pages. We will read quite a bit of the reaserch coming out of LDEO-TRL so browse through their pages.

October 10 & 12

Web Resources:This week's GEOCLUB will feature Eva Lyon and Brian Mumaw.Eva's work is with tree rings n Galcier Bay National Park and Preserve.

October 19

Web Resources: Midterm Break and then GSA will take up most of this week. You should work up the OARDC meteorological data and compare it with the KF tree-ring site.

October 26

Web Resources: This week's GEOCLUB will feature Emilyann Griffin and her work in the Bahamas. On Monday you will split and describethe lake cores from Glacial Lake Craigton. I exect a run down of your findings during class on Thursday.

Oct 31 & Nov 2

Web Resources:Readings this week will include a review article by Lonnie Thompson. We will begin our discussion about ENSO and then milennial - scale climate variability. We will also complete the Kline Farm White Oak site poster and post it on the web.This week's GEOCLUB will feature Emily Cunningham, Anne Steward and Andy Horst.

The release in the UK of the Stern Report is a significant step toward a potential unprecendented commitment of a nation to the potential dire economic consequences of climate change. Take a look at the documents and commentary that surrounds the release of this report on Monday.

November 7 & 9

Web Resources: This week's GEOCLUB will feature Dr. Steven Wojtal, Oberlin College who will be talking about the San Andreas fault.

November 14 & 16

Web Resources: With Tom Lowell's seminar in GEOCLUB and out activities in lae coring and discussion of millennial-scale change we will need to look a bit deeper into Thermohaline Circulation and how it has and may change.For a look at the Kline Site poster - download it here.

November 21

Web Resources: Short week - no Geoclub. Happy Thanksgiving

November 28 & 30

Web Resources: I will also assign a new article by Brocker in Global and Planetary Change - December 2006 volume that outlines the latest on Abrupt Climate Change. This figures in well with Tom Lowell's presentation and his EOS article. The reading by Lachner and Sachs (to be assigned later in the week) is a pragmatic look at the economics behind climate change and energy.

This week's seminar in GEOCLUB featuresDr. Steven Lower, Ohio State University:who will present A bacterium’s sense of touch – Exploring interactions at the mineral-microbe interface. His work is likey to have implications in topics we will cover later this week (CCS).

Research Paper: This is a paper covering a topic of your interest in invertebrate paleontology (and not covered in class). It will be roughly 10-15 pages in length, plus illustrations. We will discuss potential topics early in the semester so that you can get started quickly. The paper is scheduled in four assignments: first you turn in a topic and a couple primary references, second is an outline with more references, third is a preliminary draft, and fourth is the final research paper itself. Be sure to use our Departmental Writing Webpage.

Lab Reports: We will have fieldtrips to collect samples and tour the landscape of NE - Ohio. These are listed in the syllabus above. If you have conflicts let me know as soon as possible. We will be taking one trip when we will need to leave at 12noon and will return at 5:00 PM - this is a trip to the Byrd Polar Research Center, wher we will vistit the Ice Core Paleoclimatology Group and the Remote Sensing Group. You should purchase a yellow notebook in the bookstore or have some kind of field notebook for our work outside in the course of labs. Also for labs and trips bring your cameras and we will keep a running photo gallery for the class. This is fun to look at and the images can be used in reports and projects.