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
See the UBC course calendar here.
Alternatives
If the lecture section you want is full, consider registering for the 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 |
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. |
4-5 |
The Explosive Earth (Volcanoes): Eruptions, lava, ash, pyroclastic flows. Relationship of these Earth disasters to the broader fields of volcanology and geology. |
6-7 |
The Unstable Ground (Landslides): Debris flows, mud flows, erosion, floods. Relationship to hydrology, geological engineering. |
8-9 |
The Turbulent Atmosphere (Storms): Hurricanes, thunderstorms, tornadoes, lightning. Relationship to meteorology. |
10-11 |
The Violent Ocean (Waves): Tsunami, storm surge, wind waves, rogue waves. Relationship to oceanography. |
12-13 |
Impacts from Space & Mass Extinction Events: (Meteor impacts): Mass extinctions. Relationship to paleontology. |
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.