The Geography of Mars

Welcome to GEOG 441/541

The Geography of Mars course is a brand-new course, the first geography of Mars class ever offered as a regular course in any university on Earth (I offered a trial version as a Special Topics course in Spring 2007).

Missions to Mars have been flown since the 1960s, and Mars has had an extraordinary number of successful missions in the last decade and a half. These have yielded huge troves of data, which have been processed into spectacular imagery that offer more information in some cases than we have for Earth! These data and images have often upended our understanding of Mars: It's as though our questions are growing far faster than our answers. Mars has a quality about it that invites interpretation in terms of what we know about Earth but then proceeds to undermine facile analogies. Mars truly is the "yes, but ..." planet! Becoming familiar with Mars may prove addictive!

Catalogue Description

Prerequisite/Corequisite: GEOG 130 or 140 or GEOL 102 and GEOG 280 or consent of instructor. Introduction to the geography of Mars, providing a physical regionalization of the Martian surface and climate and an understanding of underlying tectonic, geomorphic, and meteorological processes. The course reviews remote sensing fundamentals and data sources for geographical analysis of Mars. Letter grade only (A-F). (3 hours seminar, 2 hours activity).