GEOG 5280 - Quaternary Environments: Deep History of the Desert Southwest

Meets with GEOG 6280. Graduate students should enroll in GEOG 6280 and will be held to higher standards and/or more work. The Quaternary designates the Earth's most recent geomorphic episodes, and Quaternary-aged deposits contain a rich record of environmental changes that have occurred over the past ~1.9 million years. These deposits are preserved in caves, bogs, lakes, alluvium, glaciers, oceans sediments, and archaeological features, so Quaternary scientists must employ multidisciplinary methods to find, recover, date, and analyze materials to reveal information about past climates and biogeography. Students in this class will visit field sites where Quaternary deposits are preserved, learn field methods, and study theories for developing chronologies, analyzing data, and interpreting results. These data are used to provide insight on climate and environmental changes that have affected humans and other organisms in the past, and can shed light on changes that are inevitable going forward into the future.