Earth & Space Sciences

This course offers an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the importance of our oceans as the driver of our climate, source of sustenance, and focus of domestic and international political, economic and legal negotiations. Students explore topics including but not limited to oceanic processes such as global and local currents and oceanic weather, marine life and marine biology, resources within our oceans, and the future and potential futures of the world's oceans as affected by humans and global warming.

This course examines sedimentology and stratigraphy as a record of Earth’s changing landscapes, depositional environments, and climates through time. It covers the principles of fluid flow, sediment transport, and sedimentary depositional environments and how these processes affect the texture and composition of sedimentary rocks; carbonate sedimentology and oceanography; the interpretation of carbonate environments; the interaction of biota with substrates; the preservation potential of different fossil groups; and sedimentary features.

This course examines the evolution of the Antarctic continent; the dynamics of polar ice; the drivers of weather and climate in Antarctica; the circulation of the Southern Ocean; and astronomy and human interaction with the polar region, including the history of exploration and intriguing legal issues.

This course, intended for international students, provides a study of Earth sciences, natural forces, and natural hazard mitigations. Instruction is provided by experts from four key fields of Earth sciences, who focus on the natural forces and phenomena surrounding the island of Taiwan. Through this course students explore the vibrancy, and sometimes unpredictable risk, of living on this beautiful island. The course format includes lectures, guest speakers, group discussions, and field trips to locations with important natural phenomena. 

This course examines the basic overview of the solar system and its structure. It covers remote sensing data from Mercury, Mars, and the Moon; using Google Earth; age, morphology and development history of Earth; and planetary interior, surface, and atmospheric processes and their impact on planetary evolution and habitability.

This course introduces and covers the fundamental yet significant topics on the basic workings of Earth System Science, the interactions between its sub-systems, the past, current, and future conditions of Earth's environments, as well as modern human activities and it's interactions with Earth's environment. Topics include: Global Change, Daisyworld: An Introduction to Systems, Global Energy Balance: Greenhouse Effect, Atmospheric Circulation System, Circulation of the Oceans, Circulation of the Solid Earth: Plate Tectonics, Recycling of the Elements, Focus on the Biota, Origin of Earth and of Life, Effects of Life on the Atmosphere: The Rise of Oxygen and Ozone, Long-term Climate Regulation, Pleistocence Glaciations, and Global Warming: Recent and Future Climate, Impacts, Adaptation, and Mitigation

This course considers how geological agents have shaped the pattern of human evolution, the development of agricultural and early industrial civilizations, and impact on the general health of these and today's societies. The lectures are supplemented by a comprehensive on-line learning resource. The first part investigates how environmental conditions (e.g. fluctuating climatic conditions, natural resource availability, geohazards, and catastrophic natural events) influenced the evolution, migration, and settlement patterns of hominid and early-modern human populations in the recent geological past. The second part of the course examines how, over the past ten thousand years, geology has influenced the development of agriculture, cities, and an increasingly sophisticated use of metals, water, and other earth resources up to the Industrial Revolution. The increasing effect of humans on the environment over time is explored, including examples of civilizations ended by their own environmental impact; the collapse of civilizations as the result of external geological forces is also considered. The third part of the course focuses on how geological and related environmental factors continue to exert strong effects on the health and wellbeing of billions of people in the 21st century. Medical geology, an emerging discipline in environmental and human health, is introduced. Case studies are used to illustrate the beneficial and harmful effects of metals, metalloids, and mineral dust on human health and their links with geological environments.