Practising science: Reading the rocks and ecology

Have you ever wondered how scientists analyse the environment? This unit introduces...

Have you ever wondered how scientists analyse the environment? This unit introduces you to the techniques used by science students at residential schools. You will learn how to determine where rocks have come from and how they were made. You will also examine the processes involved in determining the ecology of a particular area.

By the end of this unit you should be able to:

explain the difference between a mineral and a rock;
describe the textural differences between igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks;
account for these differences in terms of the processes that produce these rocks;
classify igneous rocks according to their grain size and mineralogical composition;
recognise the difference between a body fossil and a trace fossil;
sketch a rock exposure and identify faults, folds and joints;
suggest a sequence of geological events that can best explain the features observed in a rock exposure;
relate processes of the rock cycle to a plate tectonic setting;
describe the causes of sea-level changes and evidence for these changes;
understand how to use a hand lens;
define ecology;
explain some of the reasons why the study of ecology is important;
describe some of the ways in which soil pH influences the distribution of organisms;
describe some of the seaweeds and some animals zonation on rocky shores;
describe in general terms how transects, quadrats, point quadrants and time counts can be used objectively to collect quantitative data about field sites.

By: The Open University

Duration: 14 hours
Published on: Tuesday 19th July 2011
Level: Introductory
Posted under: Geology

Comments (0) Twitter Share Share

Enrol Print all pages Print

Skip Contents

Practising science: reading the rocks and ecology

Introduction

This unit is an adapted extract from the course Practising science (SXR103) [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)]

This unit introduces you to the types of activities undertaken by students of the earth sciences and ecology. You will learn how data is collected and analysed.

Next: Learning outcomes

Other pages You might like

Comments

Be the first to post a comment

To comment on this free course unit, Sign in or Register.

Copyright & revisions

No significant updates yet

Copyright information

Creative-Commons: The Open University is proud to release this free course under a Creative Commons licence. However, any third-party materials featured within it are used with permission and are not ours to give away. These materials are not subject to the Creative Commons licence. See terms and conditions. Full details can be found in the Acknowledgements section.

Feeds

If you enjoyed this, why not follow a feed to find out when we have new things like it? Choose an RSS feed from the list below. (Don't know what to do with RSS feeds?)
Remember, you can also make your own, personal feed by combining tags from around OpenLearn.

Alternative Formats

RSS

Page Tags

Sign in or create a free account to add tags to your personal tag cloud using:

Close

Practising science: Reading the rocks and ecology

Contents

Practising science: reading the rocks and ecology

Introduction

Other pages You might like

Try: Rocks in the field

Try: Biofuels

Study: Geology

Try: Geological landforms: Dorset and The...

Try: Living without oil

Study: Our dynamic planet: Earth and life

Try: Geological time

Try: Health and safety in the laboratory and...

Study: Volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis

Try: Earth's physical resources: renewable...

Try: Telescopes and spectrographs

Study: Environmental science

Comments

Copyright & revisions

Copyright information

Feeds

Alternative Formats

Tags, Ratings and Social Bookmarking

Page Tags

Ratings

Share

About this site

Study with the OU

Editor's choice

OU TV & Radio

Most popular

Views

Votes

Comments

Tags

The Open University

+44 (0) 845 300 60 90 Email us

+44 (0) 845 300 60 90
Email us