Support Documents and Videos

• Lecture Powerpoint
• Video: What Is Geology? (Geology in a Minute)

• Video: Great Minds: James Hutton, Founder of Geology
  Uniformitarianism, based on the work of James Hutton, states that the forces and processes that we observe today are the same that have shaped Earth’s landscape throughout time. Uniformitarianism is the first scientific theory to predict deep time, the idea that Earth history is so long that we cannot truly conceive the amount of time that has passed.

Assignment Video and Optional Reading

• Video: The Age of Man (2015)
  “THE AGE OF MAN draws a human, historical and political portrait that creates an exchange between the past and present in an attempt to help us better understand our future. Easter Islanders, Mayas, Vikings and even the 17^th century Japanese throw light on man’s unrelenting struggle against nature. Their stories tell us about the power relationship between human activities and man’s natural environment. “

• PDF (passw0rd): The Lost World, Kolbert, New Yorker 2013
  An account of Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), the man who founded the science of vertebrate paleontology, established extinction as a fact, and demonstrated that there was “a world previous to ours”.

“The Age of Man” Quiz Due

Support Documents and Videos

• Lecture Powerpoint
• Textbook: Introduction to Earth Science, ch.7
• Textbook: Introduction to Earth Science, ch.8

Assignment Documents and Videos

• Video: The Whole History of the Earth and Life
  A 68-minute video that reinforces the timeline defined in this week’s lectures with good visuals and animations.

Geological Time Quiz Due

Support Documents and Videos

• Lecture Powerpoint
• Video: Welcome to the Anthropocene
  A short (3 minute) video that introduces the concept of the Anthropocene Epoch

• Video: The Anthropocene: Has earth shifted out of its Holocene state?
  A half-hour Australian documentary that summarized the concepts in this week’s lecture: What is an Epoch? How is an Epoch defined? In what ways have humans changed behavior since 1950? How has recent human behavior and consumption changed the Earth system? How could we define the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch?

Assignment and Extra Credit Documents and Videos

• PDF (password): Defining the Anthopocene, Lewis and Masslin, Nature – Research Perspectives, 2015
  This article, published in the leading science journal Nature lays out the argument for justifying that geologists define a new Epoch because the Earth has shifted out of normal conditions for the Holocene Epoch that we have been in for the past 12,000 years.
• PDF (password): When Did the Human Epoch Begin? Nijhuis, New Yorker 2015
  This is a mass media summary report on the Nature article above. This article cannot be used as a stand-alone article for a Summary Assignment, but can augment a report on “Defining the Anthropocene”
• Video: Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (2020) (86 minutes)
  “A cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive reengineering of the planet, ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch is a feature documentary film from the multiple-award winning team of Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky. The film follows the research of an international body of scientists, the Anthropocene Working Group who, after nearly 10 years of research, are arguing that the Holocene Epoch gave way to the Anthropocene Epoch in the mid-twentieth century, because of profound and lasting human changes to the Earth. The filmmakers have traversed the globe using high end production values and state of the art camera techniques to document evidence and experience of human planetary domination. At the intersection of art and science, ANTHROPOCENE: The Human Epoch witnesses in an experiential sense a critical moment in geological history — bringing a provocative and unforgettable experience of our species’ breadth and impact.“

https://youtu.be/QgQsITYtIKQ

Anthropocene Quiz Due

Support Documents and Videos

• Textbook: Introduction to Earth Science, ch.17 
• Video: Asteroids, Comets, and Meteors

Assignment and Extra Credit Documents and Videos

• None

Solar System Quiz Due

Support Documents and Videos

• Video: Recreating Asteroid Strike That Killed Dinosaurs 

• Video: NASA’s Dart Mission

• Video: DART: Inside NASA’s $300m Mission to Save the World

Assignment and Extra Credit Documents and Videos

• Video: Catastrophe – Episode 4 – Asteroid Impact

• Video: Chicxulub: The Asteroid that Killed the Dinosaurs

• Link: Impact 12,800 Years Ago
• PDF (password): Airburst Destroys Bronze Age City Near Dead Sea, Bunch et al, Nature – Scientific Reports 2021
• PDF (password): The Day the Dinosaurs Died, Preston, New Yorker 2019

K-P Mass Extinction Quiz Due

Support Documents and Videos

• Textbook: Introduction to Earth Science, ch.2
• Textbook: Introduction to Earth Science, ch.9
• Video: 240 million years ago to 250 million years in the future

• Video: 4.0 to 9.0 Earthquake Simulation
  Five minute video showing you what it would look like at your desk if an earthquake struck. Demonstrates the logarithmic nature of the magnitude scale quite effectively.

• Video: What Does Magnitude Mean?
  A 2-minute video that explains the exponential nature of the earthquake magnitude numbering system

Video: 5 Powerful Earthquakes Caught On Camera
A 12-minute video presenting CCTV footage capturing the effects of large earthquakes around the world

Video: 240 million years ago to 250 million years in the future
A 12-minute animation showing the changing geography of Earth due to plate tectonics, both the past and the prediction for the future

Assignment and Extra Credit Documents and Videos

• Video: Tectonically Informed Fantasy Maps

• Video: Plate Tectonic Theory—History of How it was Discovered

Tectonics Quiz Due

Support Documents and Videos

• Video: Cascadia Earthquake Animation 9.0

• Video: Cascadia Tsunami Model

• Video: 1700 Cascadia Earthquake

• Video: Cascadia Subduction Zone—What can the landscape tell us? 

• Video: Earthquake Fault Lines in America

Assignment and Extra Credit Documents and Videos

• Video: Cascadia: The Earthquake that will Destroy Westcoast America

• PDF (passw0rd): The Really Big One, Schulz, New Yorker 2015
• PDF (passw0rd): Predicting the Earthquake That Could Wreck New York, McGrath, New Yorker 2022
• PDF (passw0rd): Earthquake Loss Estimation NYC, Tantala et al, Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 2008
• PDF (passw0rd): Seismicity in the Area Surrounding Two Mesozoic Rift Basins in the NE US, Kafka and Miller, Weston Observatory Boston College 1996

West Coast Earthquakes Quiz Due

Support Documents and Videos

• Textbook: Introduction to Earth Science, ch.15
• Textbook: Introduction to Environmental Science, ch. 3
• Video: The Difference Between Weather and Climate

• Video: How Ice Ages Happen

• Video: How Volcanoes Froze the Earth (Twice)

Assignment and Extra Credit Documents and Videos

• Video: Catastrophe – Episode 2 – Snowball Earth

• Video: The Mystery Of 536 AD: The Worst Climate Disaster In History

• PDF: Snowball Earth

Paleoclimate Change Quiz Due

Support Documents and Videos

• Video: Sinking Cities – New York (Alexander Street)
• Video: Climate change: A slow-burn existential threat (Alexander Street)
• Video: NE US Blizzards

https://youtu.be/qGNFuR8T3Uo

• PDF (passw0rd): NPCC 2015 Executive Summary
• PDF (passw0rd): Sandy – A Series of Unfortunate Events, Greene et al, Oceanography 2013

Assignment and Extra Credit Documents and Videos

• PDF (password): The Mystery of Hog Island, Garczynski, New Yorker 2022
• Video: Will New York Be Underwater by 2050?

Climate Change Effects Quiz Due

Support Documents and Videos

• Textbook: Introduction to Earth Science, ch.4
• Video: Volcanic Activity and Plate Motions

• Video: How NASA Predicts Eruptions 

• Video: 5 Monster Volcano Eruptions Caught On Camera

• Video: Hunga Tonga volcano eruption

Assignment and Extra Credit Documents and Videos

• Video: Yellowstone Supervolcano

• Video: Mount Tambora: The Year Without a Summer

Volcanism Quiz Due

Support Documents and Videos

• Video: Flood Volcanism Explained 

Assignment and Extra Credit Documents and Videos

• Video: Permian-Triassic Extinction Event – The Great Dying

• PDF: End-Permian Mass Extinction in the Oceans: An Ancient Analog for the 21^st Century?

P-T Mass Extinction Quiz Due

Support Documents and Videos

• Textbook: Introduction to Earth Science, ch.16
• Video: Green Minerals

• Video: How These Rare Minerals Will Save Our Planet

• Video: Visualizing Deep-sea Mining

• Video: NASA Mission to Metal Asteroid

Assignment and Extra Credit Documents and Videos

• Video: How Deep Sea Mining Is The Next ‘Gold Rush’

• Video Space Mining

• PDF (password): Resources in space and asteroid mining, Pena-Ramos and Ramirez-de Luis, Int. J. Technology Management, 2020
• PDF (passw0rd): Should We Mine the Deep Seafloor? Beaulieu et al, AGU Publications

Mineral Resources Quiz Due

Support Documents and Videos

• Video: How Your New Smartphone Funds Africa’s Deadliest War

https://youtu.be/Enl3VFBwL9c

• Video: Understanding America’s Critical Minerals Challenge

• Video: Why China’s control of rare earths matters (Alexander Steet) 
• Video: Conflict Minerals 101

• Video: Companies Depend on China for Rare Earths. Can That Change?

Assignment and Extra Credit Documents and Videos

• Video: Conflict Minerals, Rebels and Child Soldiers in Congo

• Video: Blood Cobalt: The Congo’s Dangerous and Deadly Green Energy Mines

Conflict Minerals Quiz Due

Final submission date for video/article summaries

Final submission date for extra credit