GEOL1005, Geologic Controls on the Vermont Landscape

OVERVIEW

Welcome to GEOL1005, Geologic Controls on the Vermont Landscape. This course was offered during January 2011, when I was a Visiting Instructor in the Middlebury College Geology Department, and was co-taught with Dave West. It focused on understanding Vermont's landscape from a geologic perspective over a wide variety of time scales. We studied tectonic processes that operate over hundreds of millions of years, glacial processes that operate over hundreds of thousands of years, and anthropogenic processes that operate over hundreds of years. This was a field-based course, and we braved the winter weather to venture into the field for a full day every Thursday. Our first field trip centered on the Middlebury area, our second on the Bristol/Jonesville/Huntington area, and our third on the Burlington/Shelburne/Ferrisburg area; we were therefore able to see much of the Champlain Valley and the higher topography to the east. At every opportunity we questioned why the landscape is the way it is, and what processes have shaped it over the different time scales mentioned above.

The course objectives were as follows:

1.) To investigate the evolution of the Vermont landscape in order to better understand the place we live.

2.) To understand the wide variety of processes that have shaped the landscape, with an emphasis on the rates and scales at which these processes have operated.

3.) To gain an appreciation for the enormity of geologic time, and to re-evaluate our own lives and our impact on the natural world within this context.

4.) To gain experience with different types of scientific writing, and to understand how scientists communicate their work with the general public.