CEE 1030 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Plate Tectonics, Geologic Hazards, Cynognathus

• School: University of Iowa
• Department: Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Course: CEE 1030
• Professor: Mary Kosloski

Document Summary

Plate tectonics is a unifying theory that explains how the earth works, and why hazards occur where they do on the earth"s surface. Scientists learned about plate tectonics by observing the distribution of the fossils, the properties and distributions of different rock types, and the locations of geologic hazards. Plate tectonics states that the outermost layer of the earth (the lithosphere) is composed of thin pates that slide around our continents move! Professor"s sister was in japan during the earthquake. Wasn"t clear where there was going to be nuclear fallout. 13+ meter tsunami runup (37. 88 m at miyako) All nuclear reactors taken offline after earthquake. Prior to this, japan relied heavily on nuclear power. All but the one mentioned before made it through the earthquake. Plate tectonics explains almost everything: rock type distribution, where oceans are, mountains are, earthquakes are, volcanoes are, etc. It is a unifying concept in the earth. As a concept, plate tectonics is ~50 years old.