Fieldwork
Fieldwork is an important part of our undergraduate curriculum.
There are several field courses available to Earth Science students, which visit sites throughout the world.
Jamaica
This is a two-week trip based at Discovery Bay Marine Laboratory, on the north shore of Jamaica. Field studies will include; coral reef ecology and geomorphology, coastal oceanographic processes andstream and groundwater sampling and analyses.
There will also be trips to investigate Jamaica's bauxite mining industry, the geology of the igneous Central inlier region, and karst processes in the Cockpit Country.
Spain
The Spain fieldtrip in year three is an opportunity to investigate the geologically young and tectonically active areas of southern Spain. You will fine-tune your mapping skills before starting your honours mapping project, and have the opportunity to reconstruct the geology of a complicated region. You will also visit a garnet-bearing volcano and see the Carboneras fault, one of the largest strike-slip fault zones in Europe.
Kinlochleven
This trip provides a structural mapping exercise, and is designed to improve the skills needed for the honours mapping project.
Mull
Mull is the site of a series of volcanoes that were active from about 61 to 58 million years ago. They form a small part of a huge volcanic province, stretching from Arctic Canada to Scotland. Erosion has stripped off most of the volcanic superstructure in Mull and exposed the igneous complex that lies beneath the old volcanoes. Besides its volcanoes, Mull also has an amazing variety of older rocks, and some of the oldest rocks in Scotland are exposed on nearby Iona.
Cyprus
Cyprus is one of the few places on Earth where the ocean crust is visible on land as a ophiolite. You will spend two weeks tracing the geological history of the island and investigating the interactions between tectonic, magmatic and sedimentary events. Highlights include a visit to the mantle and the opportunity to reconstruct an oceanic transform fault.
Oban
This is a five day fieldtrip at Dunstaffnage Marine Laboratory. It provides hands-on experience with water and sediment sampling methods, and bathymetric and hydrographic survey techniques, commonly used in coastal oceanography. Water and sediment samples are subsequently analysed for a variety of parameters and, together with bathymetric and hydrographic data, are used to provide insights on the physical and biogeochemical processes occurring in Loch Etive.
Eisen (Germany), Limoges or Condat (France) or the Lake District
This fourth year trip teaches practical and applied Geophysics in field locations and under explorations settings, with international teaching and student participation. Each day of the week will involve practical exploration of the Earth's subsurface using a different geophysical technique, then processing and interpreting the data, and combing such interpretations with those from data from other geophysical techniques.
Texas
We run a fieldtrip to the Guadalupe and Sacramento Mountains, in Texas and New Mexico, USA, every other year for either fourth or fifth year undergraduates. This trip offers students a unique exposure to some of the most spectacular sedimentary outcrops available anywhere in the world - including classic sequence stratigraphic localities - and is generously supported and funded by oil companies. The fieldtrip is lead by experts in basin analysis and seismic section interpretation, in addition to carbonate sedimentology and sequence stratigraphic techniques.
This article was published on Jun 21, 2010