GEOS 2113/2913: Making the Australian Landscape

GEOS 2113 Making the Australian Landscape
GEOS 2913 Making the Australian Landscape (Advanced)
Dr Stephen Gale

Session: February
Classes: 2 lectures and 1 practical or field session /wk
Prerequisites: 24 Credit Points of Junior Units of Study, including GEOS 1002 or GEOS 1003 or ENVI 1002 or GEOL 1001 or GEOL 1002.
Prohibitions: GEOS 2913
Assessment: One 2 hour exam, practical reports

The arid, ancient and often inhospitable Australian landscape is the product of 4000 million years of complex evolution. The continent possesses the oldest materials so far discovered on Earth and supports landforms whose origins can be traced back almost a thousand million years. Yet its aridity and its vegetation are of relatively recent origin, and its climates and environments have taken on a recognisably modern form only in the last 10 000 years. Even more recent have been the impacts of human activity. Yet both the pre-European and the European occupants have utterly transformed the environment, making the changes of the last millennia perhaps the most dramatic that the Australian landscape has experienced.

Course Outline (pdf)