GEOL 2110 - Introductory Oceanography

• Be conversant with a general overview of marine life, including the more common plankton, fishes, mammals, and birds as well as how certain types of manage buoyancy, salinity, and food.
• Be conversant with common coastal land forms and how they form.
• Be familiar with the more common ocean resources, as well as aspects of managing such resources in light of scarcity, abundance, and environmental degradation as it applies to resources.
• Have an essential understanding of how waves, tides, cyclonic storms (hurricanes), and tsunamis function.
• Know the basic properties of sea water, including salinity, temperature, pressure, pH, nutrients, and the dissolved contents of oxygen and carbon dioxide in ocean water.
• Know the basics of latitude and longitude, and be able to relate it to the history of ocean exploration and modern scientific discoveries.
• Know what some of the more pressing environmental problems.
• Understand the nature of the ocean floor and how ocean basins form and evolve in the context of the plate tectonic model.
• Understand the basic principles that govern ocean circulation in surface ocean waters, including the Coriolis Effect, Ekman Transport, circulatory gyres, upwelling, and downwelling.
• Understand the basics of nutrient availability and how it governs where ocean life is most and least productive.
• Understand the essentials of thermohaline circulation and the essentials of deep-water formation.
• Understand the ocean¿s role in the development of El Nino and La Nina events.