Geological Sciences

Prerequisites: Recommended preparation: basic high school science and math. Lab is a hands-on introduction to geochronology, paleontology, and historical geology with field trips. (See W1401 for lectures only.) Dinosaurs: a spectacular example of a common, highly successful form of life, dominant for 135 million years. Where did they come from? Why were they so successful? Why did they die out? … or did they? A basic introduction to the historical sciences and the interface between geology and biology.

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited. Students must also sign up for the corresponding lab course, EESC BC1011, to receive credit.

This class examines the basic principles of environmental science using current local and global environmental news as case studies. Issues covered are climate change, invasive species, water resources, sustainability, etc. A major goal is for students to understand the science behind environmental issues. Readings from the scientific literature, various newspaper articles, magazines and an online textbook are carefully coordinated with the topics. Because of our location, the lab curriculum features studies of the Hudson River and its forested shorelines. The lab is closely paired with the lecture and features hands-on and inquiry-based lab and field studies of statistics, data presentation, writing in the format of a scientific paper, data collection (on land and on the Hudson River), water chemistry, microbiology, microscopic and macroscopic life in the river, birds and plants in Riverside Park, biodiversity on a green roof, local geology, topographical maps, compass use, and museum studies.

Please note:  In order to register for EESC BC1001, students must first register for one of the sections of Environmental Science Lab EESC BC1011 . Students must take both lecture and lab.

What is the nature of our planet and how did it form? This class explores Earth's internal structure, its dynamical character expressed in plate tectonics and earthquakes, and its climate system. It also explores what Earth's future may hold. Lecture and lab. Students who wish to take only the lectures should register for UN1411.

"Corequisite:  EESC BC1001.  To secure a spot in the class, students must  first enroll in EESC BC1011, Environmental Science Lab before enrolling in EESC  BC1001, Lecture, to be included in the waitlist for the lecture portion.  Enrollment is secured by inclusion in the lab section which is limited in size."

"Corequisite:  EESC BC1001.  To secure a spot in the class, students must  first enroll in EESC BC1011, Environmental Science Lab before enrolling in EESC  BC1001, Lecture, to be included in the waitlist for the lecture portion.  Enrollment is secured by inclusion in the lab section which is limited in size."

"Corequisite:  EESC BC1001.  To secure a spot in the class, students must  first enroll in EESC BC1011, Environmental Science Lab before enrolling in EESC  BC1001, Lecture, to be included in the waitlist for the lecture portion.  Enrollment is secured by inclusion in the lab section which is limited in size."

"Corequisite:  EESC BC1001.  To secure a spot in the class, students must  first enroll in EESC BC1011, Environmental Science Lab before enrolling in EESC  BC1001, Lecture, to be included in the waitlist for the lecture portion.  Enrollment is secured by inclusion in the lab section which is limited in size."

"Corequisite:  EESC BC1001.  To secure a spot in the class, students must  first enroll in EESC BC1011, Environmental Science Lab before enrolling in EESC  BC1001, Lecture, to be included in the waitlist for the lecture portion.  Enrollment is secured by inclusion in the lab section which is limited in size."

"Corequisite:  EESC BC1001.  To secure a spot in the class, students must  first enroll in EESC BC1011, Environmental Science Lab before enrolling in EESC  BC1001, Lecture, to be included in the waitlist for the lecture portion.  Enrollment is secured by inclusion in the lab section which is limited in size."

"Corequisite:  EESC BC1001.  To secure a spot in the class, students must  first enroll in EESC BC1011, Environmental Science Lab before enrolling in EESC  BC1001, Lecture, to be included in the waitlist for the lecture portion.  Enrollment is secured by inclusion in the lab section which is limited in size."

Explore the geology of the sea floor, understand what drives ocean currents and how ocean ecosystems operate. Case studies and discussions centered on ocean-related issues facing society.

Prerequisites: high school science and math. An introduction to risks and hazards in the environment. Different types of hazards are analyzed and compared: natural disasters, such as tornados, earthquakes, and meteorite impacts; acute and chronic health effects caused by exposure to radiation and toxic substances such as radon, asbestos, and arsenic; long-term societal effects due to environmental change, such as sea level rise and global warming. Emphasizes the basic physical principles controlling the hazardous phenomena and develops simple quantitative methods for making scientifically reasoned assessments of the threats (to health and wealth) posed by various events, processes, and exposures. Discusses methods of risk mitigation and sociological, psychological, and economic aspects of risk control and management.

Prerequisites: Recommended preparation: basic high school science and math. Dinosaurs: a spectacular example of a common, highly successful form of life, dominant for 135 million years. Where did they come from? Why were they so successful? Why did they die out? … or did they? A basic introduction to the historical sciences and the  interface between geology and biology.

What is the nature of our planet and how did it form? This class explores Earths internal structure, its dynamical character expressed in plate tectonics and earthquakes, and its climate system. It also explores what Earths future may hold.

Prerequisites: none; high school chemistry recommended. Survey of the origin and extent of mineral resources, fossil fuels, and industrial materials, that are non renewable, finite resources, and the environmental consequences of their extraction and use, using the textbook Earth Resources and the Environment, by James Craig, David Vaughan and Brian Skinner. This course will provide an overview, but will include focus on topics of current societal relevance, including estimated reserves and extraction costs for fossil fuels, geological storage of CO2, sources and disposal methods for nuclear energy fuels, sources and future for luxury goods such as gold and diamonds, and special, rare materials used in consumer electronics (e.g. ;Coltan; mostly from Congo) and in newly emerging technologies such as superconducting magnets and rechargeable batteries (e.g. heavy rare earth elements, mostly from China). Guest lectures from economists, commodity traders and resource geologists will provide ;real world; input. Discussion Session Required.

Prerequisites: high school algebra. Recommended preparation: high school chemistry and physics; and one semester of college science. Origin and development of the atmosphere and oceans, formation of winds, storms and ocean currents, reasons for changes through geologic time. Recent influence of human activity: the ozone hole, global warming, water pollution. Laboratory exploration of topics through demonstrations, experimentation, computer data analysis, and modeling. Students majoring in Earth and Environmental Sciences should plan to take EESC W2100 before their senior year to avoid conflicts with Senior Seminar.

Recommended preparation: high school chemistry and physics; and one semester of college science. Exploration of how the solid Earth works, today and in the past, focusing on Earth in the Solar system, continents and oceans, the Earth's history, mountain systems on land and sea, minerals and rocks, weathering and erosion, glaciers and ice sheets, the hydrological cycle and rivers, geochronology, plate tectonics, earthquakes, volcanoes, energy resources. Laboratory exploration of topics through examination of rock samples, experimentation, computer data analysis, field exercises, and modeling. Columbia and Barnard majors should plan to take W2200 before their senior year to avoid conflicts with the Senior Seminar.

The course provides students with an understanding of Earth's natural systems that is essential to addressing the multi-faceted issues of sustainable development.  After completing the course, students should be able to incorporate scientific approaches and perspectives into their research in other fields or policy decisions and be able to use scientific methods of data analysis.  The semester will highlight the climate system and solutions from both physical and ecological perspectives; water resources; food production and the cycling of nutrients; and the role of biodiversity in sustainable development.  The course emphasizes key scientific concepts such as uncertainty, experimental versus observational approaches, prediction and predictability, the use of models, and other essential methodological aspects.

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited. Required field trip on first Friday of the semester. Hands-on approach to learning environmental methods. Students take a one-day cruise on the Hudson River to collect environmental samples. These samples are then analyzed throughout the semester to characterize the Hudson River estuary. Standard and advanced techniques to analyze water and sediment samples for nutrients and contaminants are taught.

Prerequisites: One year of college science or EESC V2100 or permission of the instructor. Acquisition, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of environmental data, assessment of spatial and temporal variability. Focus on water quality issues and storm surges. Uses existing and student-generated data sets. Basic principles of statistics and GIS, uses standard software packages including EXCEL and ArcGIS. Includes a half-day field trip on a Saturday or Sunday. General Education Requirement: Quantitative and Deductive Reasoning (QUA).

This course seeks to impart students with knowledge of volcanic eruptions on Earth and the effects on the environment as a whole. The course will focus on the physical mechanisms responsible for eruptions, the effects eruptions have on humans and other living organisms, as well as the environment. The course will investigate how eruptions have contributed to global climate change. The course will also look at the positive effects volcanoes have had on Earth, such as providing nutrient rich soils for growing crops and providing renewable geothermal energy--a cleaner energy resource. Format: lecture, field trip, data collection and analysis, student presentations.

Big Data is changing how we interact with and understand the environment. Yet analyzing Big Data requires new tools and methods. Students will learn to use Python programming to analyze and visualize large environmental and earths systems data sets in ways that Excel is not equipped to do. This will include both time series and spatial analyses with programming occurring interactively during class and assignments designed to strengthen methods and results. Students will learn to write code in Python, plot, map, sub-select, clean, organize, and perform statistical analyses on large global scale data sets, using the data in analysis, and take any data set no matter how large or complicated.

Prerequisites: Any 1000-level or 2000-level EESC course; MATH UN1101 Calculus I and CHEM UN1403 General Chemistry I or their equivalents. The origin, evolution, and future of our planet, based on the book How to Build a Habitable Planet by Wallace S. Broecker. This course will focus on the geochemical processes that built Earth from solar material, led to its differentiation into continents and ocean, and have maintained its surface at a comfortable temperature. Students will participate in a hands-on geochemistry project at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Volcanism is a key feature of our dynamic Earth, acting as a major driver of short- and long-term climate variability. In this course, students will learn about past impacts of volcanism on climate and the tools scientists use to reconstruct them. The first part of the course covers the foundations of volcano-climate science by diving into the ice core, tree ring, rock, and historical records of volcanism on Earth. In the second half of the course, case studies of past eruptions will become the primary focus, each illustrating the complexity of understanding volcanic impacts on climate and society and the importance of multidisciplinary studies. Finally, students will reflect on the potential threat of future volcanic events to our globalized world, and the validity of geoengineering campaigns that seek to re-claim control of Earth’s thermostat in the wake of anthropogenic warming.

Prerequisites: Reflecting the inherently interdisciplinary nature of the topic, students are required to have taken one of more of the following– EESC 2200 The Solid Earth System; EESC 2300 The Life System; EESC; 2100 The Climate System.

Students address real-world issues in sustainable development by working in groups for an external client agency. Instruction in communication, collaboration, and management; meetings with and presentations to clients and academic community. Projects vary from year to year. Readings in the course are project-specific and are identified by the student research teams.

Guided, independent, in-depth research culminating in the senior thesis in the spring. Includes discussion about scientific presentations and posters, data analysis, library research methods and scientific writing. Students review work in progress and share results through oral reports. Weekly seminar to review work in progress and share results through oral and written reports.

Guided, independent, in-depth research culminating in the senior thesis in the spring. Includes discussion about scientific presentations and posters, data analysis, library research methods and scientific writing. Students review work in progress and share results through oral reports. Weekly seminar to review work in progress and share results through oral and written reports.

Guided, independent, in-depth research culminating in the senior thesis in the spring. Includes discussion about scientific presentations and posters, data analysis, library research methods and scientific writing. Students review work in progress and share results through oral reports. Weekly seminar to review work in progress and share results through oral and written reports.

Guided, independent, in-depth research culminating in the senior thesis in the spring. Includes discussion about scientific presentations and posters, data analysis, library research methods and scientific writing. Students review work in progress and share results through oral reports. Weekly seminar to review work in progress and share results through oral and written reports.

Guided, independent, in-depth research culminating in the senior thesis in the spring. Includes discussion about scientific presentations and posters, data analysis, library research methods and scientific writing. Students review work in progress and share results through oral reports. Weekly seminar to review work in progress and share results through oral and written reports.

Prerequisites: advanced calculus and general physics, or the instructors permission. Basic physical processes controlling atmospheric structure: thermodynamics; radiation physics and radiative transfer; principles of atmospheric dynamics; cloud processes; applications to Earths atmospheric general circulation, climatic variations, and the atmospheres of the other planets.

Prerequisites: One semester of college-level calculus, college-level chemistry. College-level physics or geoscience. Or instructor’s permission. The accelerating climate change of the current day is driven by humanity’s modifications to the global carbon cycle. This course introduces the basic science of the global carbon cycle, focusing on large-scale processes occurring on annual to centennial timescales. Students will leave this course with an understanding of the degree to which the global carbon cycle is understood and quantified and the key uncertainties that are the focus of current research. We will build an understanding of the potential pathways and the significant challenges to limiting global warming to 2oC as intended by the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. 

The course will begin with a brief review of climate science basics and the role of CO2 in climate and climate change (weeks 1-2). Next, the fundamental processes of the ocean and the terrestrial biosphere carbon sinks will be covered (weeks 3-7). In weeks 8-10, our focus will be the drivers of current and future anthropogenic carbon emissions. In weeks 11-12, we will consider the potential for engineered sinks to contribute to global budgets. In weeks 13-14, students will present their final projects, and we will review the course content in the context of the December release of the current year’s Global Carbon Budget.

Prerequisites: Course Cap 20 students. Priority given to graduate students in the natural sciences and engineering. Advanced level undergraduates may be admitted with the instructors permission. Calculus I and Physics I & II are required for undergraduates who wish to take this course. General introduction to fundamentals of remote sensing; electromagnetic radiation, sensors, interpretation, quantitative image analysis and modeling. Example applications in the Earth and environmental sciences are explored through the analysis of remote sensing imagery in a state-or-the-art visualization laboratory.

Prerequisites: Introductory geology and one year of calculus. Recommended preparation: One semester of college physics. Introduction to the fundamental concepts of structure and deformation processes in the Earth's crust. Fundamental theories of stress and strain, rock behavior in both brittle and ductile fields, large-scale crustal contractional and extensional structures with focus on their geometries and mechanics of formation. Introduction to the principles of earthquake mechanics with emphasis on physical processes. Laboratory sessions (part of the lecture) will cover techniques of structural analysis, recognition and interpretation of structures on geologic maps, and construction of interpretative cross sections.

Biogeochemistry considers how the basic chemical conditions of the Earth, from atmosphere to soil to seawater, have been and are being affected by the existence of life. Human activities in particular, from the rapid consumption of resources to the destruction of the rainforests and the expansion of smog-covered cities, are leading to rapid changes in the basic chemistry of the Earth.

This course will examine biogeochemical processes in both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in Earth’s Biosphere. We will cover the historical development and evolution of biogeochemical cycles and compare past biogeochemical systems on the planet to contemporary and future eco-biogeochemical systems that are increasingly perturbed and dominated by human activity.

Prerequisites: none; high school chemistry recommended. This course is open to graduate students, and juniors and seniors within DEES, Sus Dev, Engineering, Chemistry, Physics, and APAM - or with the instructors permission. Survey of the origin and extent of mineral resources, fossil fuels, and industrial materials, that are non renewable, finite resources, and the environmental consequences of their extraction and use, using the textbook Earth Resources and the Environment, by James Craig, David Vaughan and Brian Skinner. This course will provide an overview, but will include focus on topics of current societal relevance, including estimated reserves and extraction costs for fossil fuels, geological storage of CO2, sources and disposal methods for nuclear energy fuels, sources and future for luxury goods such as gold and diamonds, and special, rare materials used in consumer electronics (e.g. ;Coltan; mostly from Congo) and in newly emerging technologies such as superconducting magnets and rechargeable batteries (e.g. heavy rare earth elements, mostly from China). Guest lectures from economists, commodity traders and resource geologists will provide ;real world; input.

Prerequisites: introductory chemistry and earth science coursework. Prerequisites: Introductory Chemistry and Earth Science coursework. Given in alternate years. This class will be an introduction to the field of stable isotope geochemistry and its application to understanding current and past environmental processes. The utility of stable isotopes as tracers will be examined with respect to the disciplines of hydrology, oceanography,paleoclimatology, paleoceanography, landscape evolution, carbon cycle and nitrogen cycle dynamics. We will focus on the stable isotopes of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen in water, ice, carbonates and organic compounds and why they fractionate in the environment. The theoretical background for isotope fractionation will be discussed in class. Radiocarbon as a tracer and dating tool will also be reviewed. In addition, the mechanics of how mass spectrometers analyze different isotope ratios will be explored in class and during experiments in the laboratory. Additional key parts of the class will be a review of paper or laboratory report and student-lead reviews of published papers on relevant topics.

Prerequisites: introductory college-level biology and chemistry. An overview of the biology and ecology of the oceans with a focus on the interaction between marine organisms and the physics and chemistry of the oceans.

Prerequisites: Recommended preparation: a solid background in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Topics: Physical properties of seawater, hydrography (water masses and their distribution), dispersal (advection and diffusion), ocean dynamics (Navier Stokes equation), processes (eddies, waves, tides), large-scale circulation (wind-driven gyres, overturning circulation).

Prerequisites: advanced calculus and general physics, or the instructors permission. Methods and underpinnings of seismology including seismogram analysis, elastic wave propogation theory, earthquake source characterization, instrumentation, inversion of seismic data to infer Earth structure.

Current topics in the Earth sciences.

Prerequisites: Graduate student status, calculus, or instructor permission Priority given to first year PhD students in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Computing has become an indispensable tool for Earth Scientists. This course will introduce incoming DEES PhD students to modern computing software, programming tools and best practices that are broadly applicable to carrying out research in the Earth Sciences. This includes an introduction to Unix, programming in three commonly used languages (Python, MATLAB and Fortran), version control and data backup, tools for visualizing geoscience data and making maps. Students will learn the basics of high performance computing and big data analysis tools available on cluster computers. Student learning will be facilitated through a combination of lectures, in-class exercises, homework assignments and class projects. All topics will be taught through example datasets or problems from Earth Sciences. The course is designed to be accessible for Earth Science graduate students in any discipline.

Prerequisites: calculus. Recommended preparation: linear algebra, statistics, computer programming. Introduction to the fundamentals of quantitative data analysis in Earth and environmental sciences. Topics: review of relevant probability, statistics and linear algebra; linear models and generalized least squares; Fourier analysis and introduction to spectral analysis; filtering time series (convolution,deconvolution,smoothing); factor analysis and empirical orthogonal functions; covariance and correlation; methods of interpolation; statistical significance and hypothesis testing; introduction to Monte Carlo methods for data analysis. Problem sets and term project require use of MATLAB or Python.

The goal of this course is to help students improve their writing for journal publication. Topics will include strategies for constructing an article; for keeping the manuscript moving forward; and for improving the quality of the student’s writing. Students must be actively working on a manuscript for publication, and must be willing to commit to a minimum of 10 minutes of writing per day. Additional work will include short reading and writing assignments throughout the term, and a small number of peer-review sessions outside of class. The course will be discussion oriented and taught in seminar style and will meet once per week for 1.5 hrs.