To meet the challenges of global change, natural resources and socio-economic needs around the Indian Ocean and its islands require understanding physical processes beneath the deep ocean and their implications for the margins. Exploring further afield from coastal marine environments is central to the Indian Ocean Deep Origins which is rooted in the Ocean Sciences vision of the Mandela University.
Geodynamic of the Indian Ocean Linking marine geophysics, plate tectonics, and sea-level change
Topics covered by the course included:
– Your brain is lying to you – (What is a scientific method?)
– Kinematic reconstruction
– Earth segmentations and kinematic phases
– The second Gondwana break-up
– Passive Margin: a typology
– Wide angle methodology: brief overview
– Marine Magnetics and seafloor spreading
– Satellite Gravity and seafloor mapping
– Passive Margin and continental basin genesis: towards a new model
– Factors controlling sedimentation
– Seismic and Sequence Stratigraphy
– Sea level cycles and sedimentary record at different scales
(Example of natural laboratory: the Provençal basin)
– Numerical stratigraphic modelling
– The link between Geology and Oceanography: Contourites and paleocurrents
– Crisis in geological record: example from the Messinian Salinity crisis