Earth & Space Sciences

This course focuses on the estuarine, coastal, and marine processes and morphological features that determine the morphodynamic behavior of coastal systems. Coastal morphodynamics is defined as the mutual co-adjustment of coastal landforms and processes. Emphasis is on the behavior of sedimentary coastal systems, such as beaches and dune coasts, barrier island systems, tidal inlets, estuaries, and deltas. It includes the behavior of both sandy and muddy coasts. The time scales involved vary from less than a second (e.g., intra-wave processes; short-term) to decades (e.g., the coastal response to sea level rise; long-term). The course starts with the dynamics of wave-, tide- and current-driven processes and the effect on sediment transport processes and associated morphological change. The second part of the course deals with the morphodynamic character of different types of coastal systems. This is analyzed by discussing, evaluating, and quantifying the dominant processes, the relevant morphological features, and sedimentary products. Exercises, papers, and case studies are an integral part of the course and are used to develop skills in analyzing and solving coastal problems. The course also contains several lectures on coastal instrumentation (for example, remote sensing) and on the societal relevance of coastal processes in mitigating coastal erosion.

Topics in this Astronomy and Geodesy course include: figure and gravity field of the earth; geometric geodesy; spatial geodesy; positional astronomy; astronomical reference systems; diurnal motion and Earth's rotation; planetary motion; time scales; stellar, galactic, and extragalactic astronomy; large-scale structure of the universe.

This course introduces the Earth System as a basis for characterizing and understanding natural hazards, their causes and consequences. The major types of natural hazard are described, analyzed, and assessed in terms of their underlying causes as well as their socio-economic and environmental impacts. This course capitalizes on natural synergies between subsurface, surface, and human dimensions of the Earth System. Hazards for consideration include earthquakes and tsunamis, volcanic hazards (local, regional and global scale), meteorological hazards (hurricanes, tornadoes, dust storms, El-Nino, flooding and coastal erosion), topographic hazards such as collapse of unstable slopes, and hazards arising from climate change. The evidence for past natural catastrophes and hazards, recorded in natural archives, are described along with remote sensing methods for documenting current hazards and hazard risk. The principles and application of risk assessment and analysis are considered with respect to case studies. The course concludes with an overview of human settlement, planning, and policy in relation to natural hazards in the light of their socio-economic impacts. 

The course focuses on the study of sediments and sedimentary rocks, erosion, transport processes and accumulation of sediments, and sedimentary facies and facies associations. Emphasis is placed on linking practical work and lectures. Exercises are conducted in the field and in the laboratory. Students are taught to log sedimentary sections and to map sediments and sedimentary rocks, to take samples, and perform basic sedimentological analyses of physical properties in the lab.

This course examines the study of global climate systems and climate change. It covers the controls of temporal and spatial variations in earth's climate and its histories of past climates preserved in the geological record, as well as modern research methods that are used in paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental reconstructions.

This course provides individual research training for students in the Junior Year Engineering Program through the experience of belonging to a specific laboratory at Tohoku University. Students are assigned to a laboratory with the consent of the faculty member in charge. They participate in various group activities, including seminars, for the purposes of training in research methods and developing teamwork skills. The specific topic studied depends on the instructor in charge of the laboratory to which each student is assigned. The methods of assessment vary with the student's project and laboratory instructor. Students submit an abstract concerning the results of their individual research each semester and present the results near the end of this program.

The subject of the course is active tectonic movements with emphasis on processes currently active in Iceland. Theory of plate tectonics, plate velocity models, both relative and absolute. Elastic and ductile behaviour of rocks in the crust and mantle. Brittle fracturing. Plate boundary deformation. Rifts and rifting structures. Transcurrent faulting and associated structures. Earthquakes and faulting. Measuring crustal movements, GPS-geodesy, levelling, SAR-interferometry, tilt- and strainmeters. A one-day field project is carried out in an active area. Additionally, one day field trip to the plate boundary areas of SW-Iceland. This course is only for exchange students.

This course studies the earth’s climate history from the deep past to recent climate change. It spotlights changes on geological time scales as well as variations over glacial-interglacial cycles, and recent human induced changes. There is a particular focus on the climate archives in the large polar ice sheets and the geological record. It introduces reading the paleo-climate archives and judging their uncertainties. This course provides an introduction to and general knowledge of what can be learned from paleo-climate archives about global and regional climate on timescales from a few thousand to millions of years. It provides an update of new records of past climate and their interpretation and the background for a critical view on man made climate change.

The course covers the various events and processes that can create natural hazards. The concept of natural hazard is defined and the history of this important field in the various natural sciences is examined. The physical causes and processes of various natural hazards are discussed. Ongoing climate change is discussed as a form of hazard, as well as the links between climate change and various weather- and climate-related events. The role of Icelandic Meteorological Office in research and monitoring of natural hazard is discussed.

Geophysics is one of main subjects in earth science using more contaminative and numerical approaches to estimate physical properties of the Earth. This course is designated to understand fundamental concepts in various subdisciplines of geophysics, including gravity, seismology, geomagnetism, geochronology, and geodynamics. With explanations for each field, relationships between the different geophysical approaches will be explored from examples of theoretical and real applications.

This course has no specific prerequisites, but a range of background knowledge and skills in calculus is expected.