Unit of Study ERTH6001 Frontiers in Marine Science II - Physical and Chemical Oceanography (2025)

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Unit Snapshot

Unit type

PG Coursework Unit
Credit points

12
Faculty & College

Faculty of Science and Engineering
Placement

No

Anti-requisites

have completed or be enrolled in: MRNE2010 - Oceanography

Enrolment information

Offered only at the National Marine Science Centre in a three-week intensive mode, which includes a compulsory 6-day residential held outside normal external residential weeks. Please refer to https://www.scu.edu.au/timetables for further information on timetables.

Unit description

Provides students with information about highly topical developments in physical and chemical oceanography. It will provide a primary mechanism for informing students about critical developments within this field, especially capturing specialized topics that are not dealt with in detail in other units within the award. Each topic will be delivered by staff members with expertise and current projects in the nominated research field.

Unit content

Five topics will be covered in each year, and will be drawn from the following:

Palaeo-environmental change
Chemical properties of seawater, such as salinity, temperature and pH, nutrient dynamics
Interactions between the ocean and atmosphere
Large-scale dynamics (e.g. ocean currents, eddy effect)
Small-scale turbulence (e.g. internal waves, micro-scale effects)
Air-sea interaction
Carbon cycling and biogeochemistry (including Climate Change and Ocean acidification)
Remote sensing of the ocean
Ocean-ice interactions
Sea level over time

Availabilities

Not currently available in 2025

Learning outcomes

Unit Learning Outcomes express learning achievement in terms of what a student should know, understand and be able to do on completion of a unit. These outcomes are aligned with the graduate attributes. The unit learning outcomes and graduate attributes are also the basis of evaluating prior learning.

On completion of this unit, students should be able to:

demonstrate an advanced understanding of highly topical issues in oceanography

apply knowledge of contemporary oceanographic issues in laboratory and/or field settings

critically evaluate a range of research methodologies for answering key scientific questions

synthesize information and present this as a professional report.

Fee information

Domestic

Commonwealth Supported courses
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