Geodynamics - Shaping Earth’s Surface

The course starts with a review of the evidence of horizontal and vertical motions of Earth’s lithosphere, and continues with a look at the constitutive equations of Earth’s mantle viscous convection, and how one can draw important first-order features of the lithosphere from simple handling of these equations. The course continues with a focus on observations (e.g., gravity anomalies, paleo-altimetry data, etc.) that allow us to infer the shape of Earth’s surface and its possible past development.

The course also features a quantitative, real data-driven project on how isostasy and elasticity of the Earth’s lithosphere determine the support of large topographic features over geological time. Such a project allows students to familiarize themselves with real data set as well as with computational tools (e.g., Matlab, Python) often utilized in the industry.

In addition to geology students, this course will be certainly of interest to students and NBI, since the description of the processes shaping Earth’s surface is done in the context of the laws of physics and thermodynamics. Students in geography may also have an interest in the long-term shape of Earth’s surface, as it provides a context for more specific studies in, among others, geomorphology and sea-level evolution.