[ image of Mars ]       

GEOG 441/541

Geography of Mars

Syllabus

GEOG 441-001 (seminar) -002 (lab): undergraduates
Class numbers: 9650 and 9651

GEOG 541-001 (seminar) -002 (lab): graduate students
Class numbers: 9652 and 9653

Instructor Information:

Instructor: Dr. C.M. Rodrigue
E-mail Address: rodrigue@csulb.edu
Home Page: http://www.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/
Course Home Page: http://www.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/mars/
Telephones: (526) 985-4895 or -8432
Office: LA4 103W
Mailbox: LA4 106
Office Hours: Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday 1-1:50 p.m. and by appointment

Catalogue Description:

Prerequisites or corequisites: GEOG 130 or 140 or GEOL 102, and GEOG 280, and upper-division (GEOG 441) or post-baccalaureate (GEOG 541) status, or instructor approval.

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. (3 hours seminar, 2 hours lab activity)

Course Coverage:

The course will cover the history of Mars exploration, review remote sensing fundamentals and data sources about Mars, and the planet's basic characteristics. The course then provides a physical regionalization of the Martian surface and underlying tectonic and geomorphic processes, as well as a treatment of the climatic regionalization of the planet. The course will review Mars' history as a screen for human fantasy, consider the possibilities of human settlement there, and the ramifications of Apollo II.

Course Objectives:

  • Understanding of the scientific method in geography and related fields as they relate to the study of another planet
  • Understanding of the power and limitations of Earth- and near-Earth-, flyby-, orbiter-, and lander-based remote sensing as a means of exploring another planet
  • A familiarity with Mars as a place at several scales of analysis
  • An appreciation of deep time in the Martian landscapes
  • A sense of how geographers can contribute to the exploration of Mars
  • An ability to reason about and generate hypotheses concerning features of the Martian surface from what you know about physical geography, geology, and/or environmental science
  • A sense of how presently available data can be used to test these hypotheses ... and a sense of which questions cannot be answered now and the sorts of data that need to be collected in the future to answer them
  • Practice in mapping Mars and communicating your analyses in writing and suitable maps, graphs, and tables
  • And some fun along the way as we look at how Mars affects the human imagination!

Required Course Materials:

  • Text: Carr, The Surface of Mars

Recommended Course Materials:

  • Text, your introductory physical geography, general geology, or environmental science textbook that, of course, you would never think of selling back to the bookstore!
  • Novel, your choice from an approved list of novels set on Mars for those of you seeking extra credit

Grading:

I grade on a modified curve based on the following assessments:
  • Midterm = 25%
  • Final = 25%
  • Annotated bibliography = 25%
  • Labs = 25%
  • For graduate students, a project entailing original analysis of archival data suitable for conference presentation = 25% effort beyond the other requirements of the class
There will be an extra credit opportunity. You can read a novel set on Mars and do a report relating the story to the state of Mars science at the time the novel was written. Depending on how good a job you do, you can gain up to 5 additional points, and this can potentially move you up a full letter grade.

Makeup Policy:

Makeups are possible in the event of a documented unexpected emergency in a student's life or through prior arrangement with the instructor when the student has advance knowledge of a compelling conflict in schedule, including jury duty or other governmental obligation; death, injury, or serious illness in the family; certain University sanctioned activities; or religious obligations and observances. Makeups under these circumstances will not be penalized. Scheduling a plane flight before the final is not a compelling conflict in schedule and will be penalized. All other makeup requests are subject to denial or serious penalty.

Tentative List of Topics:

  • Introduction
    • The general nature of scientific inquiry
    • The specific features of geographic inquiry
    • Geography and Mars

  • History of Mars exploration
    • History of Mars observation from Earth
    • History of the robotic missions to Mars

  • Remote sensing basics

    • Electromagnetic spectrum
    • Emitted sources and radiative sources
    • Imaging vs. spectroscopy
    • Spatial, spectral, radiometric, and temporal resolution
    • Spacecraft types: flyby, orbiter, lander, rover

  • Sources of data on Mars available today
    • Missions to Mars
    • Imagery from on or near Earth

  • Mars in space
    • Orbital characteristics
    • Rotational characteristics
    • Basic dimensions
    • The moons of Mars: Phobos and Deimos
    • Martian palæomagnetism, the solar wind, and ablation of the atmosphere

  • A physiographic regionalization of Mars and the processes behind the patterns
    • Introduction: a foray into a whole new vocabulary for landforms
    • The orders of relief: Scale of topographic variation
      • First order of relief: the crustal dichotomy
      • Second order of relief: the conspicuous features that can organize our mental map
      • Third order of relief: regions of the Noachian, Hesperian, and Amazonian epochs
      • Fourth order of relief: landscapes and landforms of single images
      • Fifth order of relief: individual features seen in the highest resolution images from orbit and at the scale of the landers' and rovers' activities

  • A climatic regionalization of Mars and the processes behind the patterns
    • The Martian atmosphere: composition and vertical structure
    • Martian weather
    • Martian geochemical cycles and weather
    • Martian climates today
      • The Martian "tropics"
      • The Martian mid-latitudes
      • The Martian polar zones

  • Human-environment interactions: Mars of the imagination
    • Science fiction imagines Mars
    • Science imagines Mars
    • Pseudoscientists imagine martian artifacts
    • Politicians imagine Mars

Accessibility:

It is the student's responsibility to let me know at the beginning of the semester if s/he has a disability that may require accommodation. I am personally committed to making my classes accessible and providing accommodations that will help everyone have the same chance at success. I need to know about the issue at the beginning of the semester, though, so that we can work out a mutually reasonable and satisfying accommodation. For more information on campus support services for disabled students, please check out http://www.csulb.edu/divisions/students2/dss.

Withdrawal Policy:

It is the student's responsibility to withdraw from classes. Instructors have no obligation to withdraw students who do not attend classes and, because of the bureaucratic difficulty involved, generally choose not to do so. This often catches transfer students by surprise, because community colleges require instructors to drop non-attending students and provide easy and routine mechanisms for them to do so. If you've been "spoiled" by that system, please be aware that it doesn't work that way here.

The deadline to withdraw from a class without a "W" showing up on your transcript is 5 February. You can withdraw until 10 p.m. that night through MyCSULB or IVR. You can withdraw later, until 20 April, but you'll have a "W" show up on your transcript. From 20 April to 11 May, you can only withdraw for a documented serious and compelling emergency, with the approval of the dean's office, which expects that you are dropping all of your classes because of the seriousness of the emergency. Note: "I'm not doing well in this class, so I have to drop it" is not regarded as a serious and compelling emergency. Here are the various deadlines for Spring 2012: http://www.csulb.edu/depts/enrollment/dates/registration_spring.html

Cheating and Plagiarism Policy:

Written work that you hand in is assumed to be original unless your source material is documented appropriately. Using the ideas or words of another person, even a peer, or a web site, as if it were your own, is plagiarism. Simply changing the wording around so that it's not a direct quotation is still plagiarism if you don't give credit to the source of the ideas. If you use the exact wording of your source, enclose the statement in quotation marks or (with longer quotations) indent and single space it and then cite the source and page. When in doubt, cite. Cheating and plagiarism are serious academic offenses: They represent intellectual theft. Students should read the section on cheating and plagiarism in the CSULB catalogue, which can be accessed at http://www.csulb.edu/divisions/aa/catalog/current/academic_information/cheating_plagiarism.html.

Furthermore, students should be aware that faculty members have a range of academic actions available to them in cases of cheating and plagiarism. At a minimum, I will fail a student cheating or plagiarizing on a particular assignment, but only if I think that there was some misunderstanding about what these offenses are; if I feel that the decision to cheat or plagiarize was intentional, I will fail a student in the course. I also may then refer the student to Judicial Affairs for possible probation, suspension, or dismissal.

When in doubt, please ask me if you think you're getting into a grey area. To learn a little more about plagiarism, take a look at this workshop on ethics in science that several faculty put together: The second section is about plagiarism. http://www.csulb.edu/geography/gdep/ethics.html.

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This document is maintained by Dr. Rodrigue
First placed on the web: 01/25/07
Last updated: 01/14/12