Welcome to the web
page for GEL 134
Environmental Geology and Land Use
Planning.
Instructor: James R. Rustad,
Ph.D.
e-mail: jrrustad@ucdavis.edu
Office: Rm 395 PHYGEO
Office Hours: Th 3:00-4:00
W 1:00-2:00
Req. Books: Living Dangerously, Heinrich Holland and
Ulrich Petersen (HU)
Out of Gas, David
Goodstein (DG)
Cadillac Desert,
Marc Reisner (MR)
Beyond Oil: The view from
Hubbert’s Peak, Ken Deffeyes (KD)
Grades: Midterm Exam: 50%; Final Exam: 50%
Syllabus (with reading
assignments and tentative schedule)
Monday
Jan 7 slides(pdf)
Wednesday Jan 9
notes
slides(pdf) slides(ppt)
Friday Jan 11 (no
class... READ!)
Monday
Jan 14 (up to page 39 in HU)
Wed
Jan
16 water
Fri
Jan 18 (slides pdf)
(these are
from the book, so you have them)
Key concepts from water
Global Water cycle, total runoff
Darcy's Law
Diffusion
Monday Jan 21 Holiday
Wednesday Jan 23 Biosphere
(slides,
again in book) (excel info sheet on carbon
emissions of different fuels)
Informal problem given wednesday:
The US uses 20,000,000 barrels of oil/day. Calculate the input
of carbon into the atmosphere from this activity. The
information sheet
gives the amount of carbon (use carbon, not co2) emitted per
quadrillion BTU
of energy released of various fuels. You may use the numbers
given for crude oil.
A quadrillion is 1000 trillion (peta or 10^15). How
does this fit into the carbon cycle
Figure 5.4 in your book?
Friday
Jan 25 Biosphere II, Populations&Growth
Models (pdf) Logistic Map (pdf)
Key concepts: Exponential Growth, Logistic Growth, Carrying Capacity,
Parameter Sensititivity, Nonlinearity
Warning- Stuff on logistic growth is not in the book.
Monday
Jan 28 Minerals and
Environmental Earth Materials
I
Wednesday Jan 30 Minerals and
Environmental Earth Materials II
Study Questions For Mid-Term on Friday Feb
8
Friday Feb 1 Minerals III
A few more study questions for Mid-Term
Monday Feb 4 Oceans I
A few key ideas:
1) Long-term land subsidence in Mississipi Delta-- mantle is still
adjusting to sediment delivered down to the delta
from ice age melting.
2) Residence times of ions dissolved in seawater-- how to
calculate : Reservoir/(input rate) = residence time (assuming
steady state conditions)
Wed Feb 6 Oceans II
Fri Feb 8 Midterm (make sure
you can answer the study questions!)
Mon Feb 11 CO2 in the Atmosphere Through
Geologic Time
we did some of this earlier but it was always at the last 5 minutes of
class
Basic message- we believe that the atmosphere has been 10-15 times
richer
than today's CO2 levels in the Phanerozoic-Cenozoic geologic past (i.e.
the last 600 million years)
Today's values are in fact anomalously low when viewed on this time
scale.
But how is this estimated and how reliable are the estimates?
This information is not in the book, so be sure to look over the slides
if you
were not there.
Wed Feb 13 Intro to Hubbert's Peak
For those who were not there: This follows almost exactly Deffeyes
Chapter 3
We analyzed only the US production history. If you read Deffeyes,
you'll be
fine. Deffeyes gives a very clear presentation.
I did warn everyone that I was going to give an assignment on
Friday
in which you apply these concepts to estimate world production history
and total amount of crude oil in the Earth.
Friday Feb 15 More
Hubbert (same slides as Feb 13)
Assignment, DUE by end of Quarter
Use Hubberts Method, as conveyed by Deffeyes,
to estimate the total number of barrels of
crude oil in the Earth's crust.
Here are the world production data courtesy of Ken Deffeyes (world.dat) (regular text format)
Monday Feb 18 Holiday
Wed Feb 20 Special guest
lecture by Prof. William Casey on
environmental effects of radiation
Friday Feb 22 Patterns of
Global Energy Use (slides)
CO2 content of Fossil Fuels
EIA
annual energy report
At this point if you have
finished Chapters 8 and 11 in the Holland and Petersen
book, and Chapter 3 of the
Deffeyes book, you are up to date.
Monday Feb 25 Nuclear Energy (slides ppt) (read Deffeyes 124-151)
Wednesday Feb 27 Video "Power
of the Sun" http://powerofthesun.ucsb.edu/
Prof Michael Graetzel will be speaking Tuesday March 4 ad 4:10 pm in
179 Chemistry
on Solar Hydrogen Generation by Water Photolysis. You surely
should come
if you are interested in in energy research (which you should
be!). Will be packed
so get there early.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graetzel_cells
Friday Feb 29 Models for
Distribution of Mineral
Resources in the Earth's Crust (Uranium Example from Deffeyes Book
(uranium chapter))
This was a "chalk" lecture. The main point is is the diagram
showing
the distribution of Uranium in the crust, which we claimed is a
lognormal
distribution. The reason it is lognormal is that the ultimate
concentration depends
on many contingencies where the probabilities of each contingency is
multiplicative.
This is the same as adding on a log scale. Read the Deffeyes
chapter
on uranium if you weren't there.
Monday March 3 Mineral
Resources, Demand, Scarcity Issues I
Here we modified our knowledge friday and wondered about the existence
of "ores" that is a "double bump" on the log scale plot of
distribution. This is the "Skinner"
model of crustal distribution.
Wed March 5 Mineral
Resources. Controls on prices
The "Sherwood" plot of price vs crustal abundance is the bottom line.
Here are slides from the
lecture.
At this point, you should have read
Chapters 9 and 10 in the Holland and Peterson Book
Friday March 7 Acid Mine
Drainage I "Chalk talk" about the basics
of pollution from mines and acid mine drainage
Monday March 10 Acid Mine
Drainage II and CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response,
Compensation, and Liability Act)
Examples from Iron Mountain Mine (near Redding, CA) and Anaconda Site
(Butte to Missoula, MT)
Here are the slides.
Chapter 12 can be read in the Holland and Peterson book for this week
But lots of this can be merely skimmed.
Wed March 13 Mining laws
and global examples
Bougainville, Summitville, Zandusky slides
2007
FINAL EXAMPLE QUESTIONS
Friday March 15 Review of Major
Concepts (slides we discussed)
Monday March 17 More review (more slides we discussed)