Here are the courses that I teach:

Refer to the Brock University Calendar for official course descriptions.

A core and context course designed for non-science majors. This fall-term course introduces geological principles and focuses on the nature and effect of "extreme" events such as asteroid impacts, volcanoes, earthquakes, undersea landslides, etc. The course was offered for the first time in the Fall of 2003 and has continued to appear to be of considerable interest by Brock students. Like ERSC 1F90, below, ERSC 1P92 is approved for core and context science credit in programs at Brock. Note that a second 1/2 credit course is offered during the winter term (ERSC 1P93) and, combined with ERSC 1P92, provides a full credit of science core and context. Please feel free to stop by at www.brocku.ca/extreme_earth

ERSC 1F90 Geology and the Environment

ERSC 1F90 is an introductory course in the Earth Sciences that is designed for non-science students. The course includes a frist term that deals with "physical geology" including rocks and minerals, the origin and current state of the solar system, plate tectonics and related phenomena (earthquakes and volcanoes). The second half of the course focuses on the history of the Earth and the nature of modern environments the deposits of which are commonly recognized in ancient sedimentary rocks.

During the summer term I offer a somewhat modified version of ERSC 1F90. All course material for the summer of 2009 may be obtained by clicking Here.

ERSC/GEOG 2P16 Introduction to clastic sedimentology

All ERSC/GEOG 2P16 course material

This is an introductory level course that focuses largely on process sedimentology. The first section covers the description and low-level interpretation of grain size, shape and fabric, along with a treatment of porosity and permeability. The section on grain fabric introduces means of displaying and treating directional data. The next section deals with the classification of sedimentary rocks and their geologic interpretation (maturity, provenance, etc.). A section on fluid flow and sediment transport follows, including the use of Shield's criterion for initiation of motion and Middleton's criterion for the initiation of suspension. Bedforms and stratification under unidirectional flows are considered, including the classification of bedforms and the forms of internal stratification that they produce. The final section of the course deals with bedforms and stratification produced by oscillatory and combined flows. The course follows a text that I wrote specifically for this course: "Introduction to Clastic Sedimentology, ERSC/ERSC 2P16 Course Notes", it is available in PDF format at the course web site (see link above).

ERSC 4P10 Advanced Clastic Sedimentology

This course builds on ERSC 2P16 (formerly ERSC 2P10 and before that ERSC 2P31) by applying the description and interpretation of sediments to the interpretation of ancient depositional environments. The course consists of essays, seminars and a group project involving the study of cores of the Grimbsby Sandstone and associated units drilled during oil and gas exploration beneath Lake Erie. Students prepare a final report and make a group presentation outlining the results of their core study.