Overarching Goals
A. For earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, storms, waves, and meteor impacts, you will:
- Learn how they work.
- Locate the dangerous places where they've often occurred.
- Learn ways to observe and monitor them.
- Find out why it's hard to forecast them.
- Learn what you and your community can do to prepare for them.
B. We will strive to:
- Empower you to be a survivor.
- Enable you to approach new challenges insightfully.
- Sharpen your observations of nature.
- Stimulate your excitement in our planet.
See also learning goals for non-specialist courses.
Instructors
This is a team aught course, the course Administrator is Dr Lucy Porritt
For additional instructors please see the UBC course calendar here.
Alternatives
If the lecture section you want is full, consider registering for the hybrid or Distance Education section (99A/B in Fall, or 99C/D in Spring) instead. It's the same course covering the same content for the same credits, but you do it online from home. Over 90% of the Distance Ed students are regular on-campus UBC students.
The Earth Course Assistance Centre is a help service for all students in 1st year EOSC courses.
EOSC114 was part of EOS-SEI, the EOS Science Education Initiative during 2007-2009.
Textbook and clickers
Lecture Topics
Week |
Topic (but check for details once registered) |
1-2 |
Fragile System?: The earth, ocean, atmosphere system. Natural disasters are rare events. Energy available for change. Risk analysis. Population issues. |
2-3 |
Impacts from Space & Mass Extinction Events: (Meteor impacts): Mass extinctions. Relationship to paleontology. |
4-5 |
The Turbulent Atmosphere (Storms): Hurricanes, thunderstorms, tornadoes, lightning. Relationship to meteorology. |
6-7 |
The Violent Ocean (Waves): Tsunami, storm surge, wind waves, rogue waves. Relationship to oceanography. |
8-9 |
The Shaking Earth (Earthquakes): Plate tectonics, faults, earthquakes, volcanoes, eruptions, lava, ash, pyroclastic flows. Relationship of disasters to the broader fields of seismology, geology, geophysics. |
10-11 |
The Unstable Ground (Landslides): Debris flows, mud flows, erosion, floods. Relationship to hydrology, geological engineering. |
12-13 |
The Explosive Earth (Volcanoes): Eruptions, lava, ash, pyroclastic flows. Relationship of these Earth disasters to the broader fields of volcanology and geology. |
13 |
Review: Physical processes common to geophysical disasters. |
Labs
Although we do not require that you take a lab, your own program might require that you take a "lab-based" science course. If you need such a lab-based course, you may register for both the 3-credit EOSC 114 (the regular on-campus lecture course or the distance ed sections) and the 1-credit laboratory course EOSC 111 concurrently. Even if your own program doesn't require that your science course be lab-based, many students find that taking the lab helps them to understand the lecture material better.