Article from the August 2002 issue of
SUMMER SCHOOLS 2002 - FEEDBACK
SXR369 Environmental Change: the record in the rocks
Week 6 – 12 July: It was a very memorable and enjoyable week, but damn hard work. The objective was to learn to interpret sedimentary successions in terms of sea-level change, be they the result of glacioeustasy, subsidence or tectono-eustasy, as well as improving one’s observational and descriptive skills. The exercises and localities were very well thought out and made sequence stratigraphy far more approachable, bringing it into the realm of the understandable for me.
This particular summer school takes place at St Mary’s College, Durham University, which I’m sure will bring back fond memories to those who have done the associated S260 summer school of indescribable meals, packed lunches suitable for 10 year olds and stern dinner ladies, not forgetting the disco, country dancing and Trevor’s pub quiz. The latter are unchanged while the former are greatly improved.
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| Carboniferous braided stream sandstone deposits at Seaton Sluice (NZ 339768). Lovely nested trough-cross stratification! |
Tutor support was excellent, particularly as a lot of handholding was needed at the start of the week (and literally at some localities – all part of the fun). When the tutor answers one of your acute observations in that wary "yes, well, hmmm" kind of way, you know you’ve just uttered a load of rubbish and the tutor is probably wondering if you are both talking about the same outcrop!
The culmination of the week was a bit of sequence stratigraphical interpreting by ourselves. All the lab and field exercises were put into practice as groups of 8 split into pairs to log 4 different stretches of an outcrop. The fun started when each pair then had to interpret their log in the context of the whole outcrop. This of course involves group work implying you all know what you are talking about, are sure of your observations and, as a group, are capable of bringing it all into one comprehensible and cohesive presentation, particularly as this activity takes place the day after field observations. There was quite a bit of head scratching and "now what exactly did I mean by this squiggle in my note book?"
Be warned, time to prepare the group presentation is very limited. Some found themselves scrabbling around at the last minute trying to cobble together a conclusion. Others were having in-depth discussions about what it all meant. A very entertaining exercise for the tutors I’m sure. They certainly had their revenge when it came to each group presenting their posters. Time allocated per person was 60 seconds, just long enough for my voice to go from strong and sure of myself to wavering to faltering and then dying on me completely!
Overall there was a very good atmosphere and I felt I learnt an awful lot of valuable information and skills.
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The photographs I took during summer school, as well as those of Clare (part of the group I was working with) can be found at the following site http://groups.msn.com/SXR369/shoebox.msnw.
by Kirsty Crocket
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Last modified on Monday, May 09, 2005 at 17:03
