使命宣言

Geoscience is the study of planet Earth, its materials, the processes that act upon them, and the history of the planet and its life forms since its origin. 任务 of Skidmore's geosciences program is to apply the understanding of Earth processes to contemporary issues such as Earth resources, land-use planning, and global change. The program's curriculum includes ocean and atmospheric sciences, Earth surface processes, 以及全球变化的历史. 我们的课程是为一般的学生设计的 interest in the geosciences as well as for students planning to pursue a graduate 学位. We accomplish this mission by providing an environment in which students acquire sound scientific problem-solving, research, and communication skills.

Geoscience students obtain a strong foundation for lifelong learning, professional development in the geosciences, and enhanced career opportunities in other fields that require a broadly based background in this discipline. 文科学位 in geosciences prepares a student for a number of professional activities related to resource management, climatology, oceanography, hydrology, Earth hazards, land-use 规划和环境咨询. 我们部门为更广泛的领域做出贡献 mission of the college by providing courses that enhance student awareness of, and appreciation for, Earth's dynamic systems and the scientific methodologies by which 他们是被理解的. Our program complements and is complemented by environmental 在其他自然科学之外的研究.

地质背景

The Saratoga vicinity lies at the intersection of the Hudson and Mohawk River valleys. The region is bounded by the Proterozoic metasediments of the Adirondacks to the north, the Cambro-Ordovician Taconics to the east, the Devonian Helderbergs and Catskills to the south, and flat-lying Cambrian to Silurian strata to the west. 据的 fault passes through the center of Skidmore's Jonsson Campus, which itself is underlain by the lowermost Ordovician stromatolite- and chert-bearing Gailor Dolomite southeast of the fault and Grenville age garnitiferous gneiss to the northwest. 立即 to the east of the campus, the Gailor is dropped into the shallow subsurface by the 萨拉托加断层系统. East of this fault the Middle Ordovician Canajoharie Shale overlies the Gailor and serves as the cap rock beneath which the world-famous Saratoga Springs flow on the down-dropped eastern side of the fault. 它可以真正地说没有 exaggeration that the City of 萨拉托加温泉市 owes its existence, and 火博体育大学 owes its location, to a unique and complex interplay of geologic phenomena that extend in time from the Holocene back to the late Proterozoic Grenville Orogeny.

The preceding could stand alone to afford any geosciences department a wealth of proximal field study sites for its students, but in Skidmore's case that need not 足够了. The world famous stromatolite "reefs" of the uppermost Cambrian Hoyt Limestone outcrop immediately to the west of campus in the "Skidmore" quarry and at Lester Park. The latter is the site of the first report of stromatolites and of ooids in North America as well as the type locality of Cryptozoon proliferum, which is globally the 第一个被冠以林奈名字的叠层石. 往东几英里就到了 of campus, Stark's Knob, New York's State's only "volcano," is exposed on the west 位于斯尤勒维尔以北哈德逊河的一侧. Stark's Knob是一个奥陶纪枕头 现在是Taconic逆冲断层带的一部分. 它以约翰将军的名字命名 Stark, who mounted a battery of cannon on the site to block the retreat of the British army's northward retreat following the fall 1777 Battle of Saratoga, otherwise known 作为美国独立战争的转折点.

On the way to Saratoga from Quebec, the British army traveled on lakes and through valleys that occupy down-dropped blocs of fault systems that are generically related 到伍德劳恩和萨拉托加断层. 萨拉托加战役本身基本上就是一场战役 on the topset beds of a Holocene delta complex of postglacial Lake Albany. 一个小 part of the Jonsson Campus stood as a small island above the 450' high stand elevation 奥尔巴尼湖. Dune and beach deposits, along with glacial tills, constitute the surficial sediments of the campus and lake bottom varved clays underlie the sports 西边的田野. A drumlin field and a buried channel of the Pleistocene Hudson River lie only a few kilometers to the west in the Towns of Greenfield and Milton. The channel fill, now known as the Kayaderosseras aquifer, is one of the Saratoga 附近的主要饮用水源.

Skidmore's proximity to such a unique and diverse set of geological field sites rivals almost any college or university in the country for teaching undergraduate courses in the geosciences and also in interdisciplinary venues that highlight the interactions 之间的 智人 以及自然环境.