The science of landscapes:
Earth and Planetary Surface Processes
GEOS 28600
Instructor: Edwin Kite, kite@uchicago.edu
Class: Mondays and Wednesdays, 3pm-4:20pm. Hinds 180.
Office hours: Wednesdays, 2pm-3pm. Hinds 467.
Late homework policy: 10 percent reduction in maximum grade per day late.
Labs: There will be a total of 5 labs. Schedule TBD (10:30a-11:20a Fridays is likely).
Lecture 1: week 1, Monday lecture (1 Oct) - Introduction. Shape, geoid, True Polar Wander.
Lecture 1 slides.
Required reading:
pages 25-30 from
Chapter 2 of Melosh.
Lecture 2: week 2, Monday lecture (14 Jan) - True Polar Wander. Bathymetry of the oceans.
Lecture 2 slides.
Required reading:
Chapter 3 of Anderson and Anderson. (only pages 28-38 are required)
Problem Set 1: [pdf].
Lecture 3: week 2, Wednesday lecture (16 Jan) - How is topography supported? What limits the height of mountains?
Lecture 3 slides.
No lecture on 21 Jan; Martin Luther King day
Lab 1 optional reading.
Lapotre et al. Science 2016.
Charru et al. Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Science 2013.
Lecture 4+ make-up lecture 5: week 3, Wednesday lecture (23 Jan) - Magma and lava.
Lecture 4/5 slides.
Required reading:
Chapter 5 of Melosh. (Only sections 5.1.3 and 5.3, plus Box 5.3).
Griffiths, Annual Reviews of Fluid Mechanics, 2000. (Only sections 1-4 are required).
Optional reading:
Wilson and Head 1981.
Problem Set 2: [pdf].
Background on the process of travertine-terrace build-up:
``Watching rocks grow", Veysey and Goldenfeld 2008.
Lecture 6: week 4, Monday lecture (28 Jan) - The flow of ice.
Lecture 6 slides.
Required reading:
Schoof and Hewitt 2013 (only Sections 1 and 2 are required).
Problem Set 3: [pdf].
Lecture 7: week 4, Wednesday lecture (30 Jan) - Fluvial sediment transport: introduction.
Lecture 7 slides.
Required reading:
Knighton, chapter 3 (sections on "Thresholds of erosion" and "Sediment transport" only).
Optional reading:
Gary Parker's 1D sediment transport morphodynamics e-book
Dietrich, "Fluvial gravels on Mars," 2017 (courtesy of W.E. Dietrich and M. Palucis)
Melosh, chapter 10. (pages 395-411 only)
Parker, 2008.
Parker et al. 2007.
Dingman, chapter 6.
Lecture 8: week 6, Monday lecture (11 Feb) - Continuation of introduction to fluvial sediment transport.
Lecture 8 slides.
Required reading:
chapter 12 of Anderson and Anderson. (pages 382-389 only)
Lab 3 - Tuesday 12 Feb, Hinds 440
Lab 3 instructions.
Problem Set 4: [pdf].
Lecture 9: week 6, Wednesday lecture (13 Feb)
Lecture 9 slides.
Required reading: None, but make sure you understand the required sections of Chapter 3 of Knighton from lecture 7: "Thresholds of erosion" and "Sediment transport".
Lecture 10: week 6, Friday lecture (15 Feb)
Lecture 10 slides.
Optional reading (note that there is a typo on slide 16 of the lecture, which referring to 'required' reading - the reading for this lecture is optional):
Whipple et al. 2013, Treatise on Geomorphology (sections on "Erosion Processes and Bedforms" and on "River Profiles and Landscape Relief" only).
Parker, 2008.
Lecture 11: week 7, Monday lecture (18 Feb)
Lecture 11 slides.
Required reading:
Dietrich et al. 2003 (Sections 2 and 3 only).
Whipple and Tucker 1999 (Sections 1 and 2 only).
Optional reading:
Seminara 2010 (Origin of river planform morphology).
Pfeiffer et al. 2017 (Adjustment of river depth to match sediment supply in gravel-bed rivers).
Dadson et al. 2003 (Taiwan as a natural laboratory for uplift-versus-erosion).
Gibling and Davies 2012 (The effect of biological macroevolution on the shape of rivers).
Lecture 12: week 7, Wednesday lecture (20 Feb)
Lecture 12 slides.
Required reading:
Anderson and Anderson chapters 10 and 13 (only the subsections on 'Erosion processes' and 'Stream profiles' from chapter 13).
Problem Set 5: [pdf].
Lecture 13: week 7, Friday lecture (22 Feb)
Lecture 13 slides.
Required reading:
Perron et al. 2009.
Optional reading:
Anderson and Anderson chapters 10 and 13 (p. 307-328, from chapter 10).
Lecture 14: week 8, Monday lecture (25 Feb)
Lecture 14 slides.
Optional reading:
Anderson_and_Anderson, ch. 6.
Lab 5: week 8, Tuesday (26 Feb) - "Shorelines" on Mars.
Lab 5 Instructions.
Lab 5 Files Directory.
Lecture 15: week 8, Wednesday lecture (27 Feb)
Lecture 15 slides.
Required reading:
Allen, Nature, 2008.
Lunine and Atreya, 2008.
Optional reading, Late Pleistocene erosion rates:
Herman and Champagnac, 2016 (the case for an increase in erosion rates during the Pleistocene).
Willenbring and Jerolmack, 2016 (the case against an increase in erosion rates during the Pleistocene).
Optional reading, Titan:
Perron et al. 2006.
Aharonson et al., 2013.
Hayes 2016.
Problem Set 6: [pdf].
Lecture 16: week 9, Monday lecture (4 Mar) - Landscape evolution: Earth example - Grand Canyon.
Lecture 16 slides.
Optional reading, age of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado:
Flowers and Farley, 2012 (the case for an old age for the Grand Canyon).
Karlstrom et al., 2014 (the case for a young age for the Grand Canyon).
Hill and Polyak, 2014 (karst piracy?).
Lecture 17: week 9, Wednesday lecture (6 Mar) - Impact cratering: contact and compression.
Lecture 17 slides.
Required reading:
Melosh chapter 6. (part 6.3 only)
Derivation of the Hugoniot equations (Appendix I in Melosh's 1989 monograph) .
Lecture 18: week 10, Monday lecture (11 Feb) - Impact cratering: excavation, modification.
Lecture 18 slides.
Required reading:
Melosh and Ivanov, 1999 (pages 392-402 only).
Suggested reading:
Taylor's solution for blast waves.
Lecture 19: week 10, Wednesday lecture (13 Feb) - Aeolian processes.
Lecture 19 slides.
Suggested reading:
Kok et al. Reports on Progress in Physics 2012 (sections 2-4 only).