COURSE learning objectives, ACTIVITIES, and methods of assessment

LEARNING OUTCOMES
​After completing this course, you should be able to: ​
ACTIVITIES AND METHODS OF ASSESSMENT​​
What we will do to meet the learning outcomes:
CLIMATE PROXIES
  • Sample living and dead trees to produce a wet-dry climate chronology gaining beginner to intermediate level skills with cross-dating, skeleton plotting, measuring ring-widths, and using Cofecha and Arstan software programs 
  • Explain the strengths and weaknesses of tree-rings as a proxy for retrodicting past climates
  • Understand basics of the application of other proxy methods (including palynology, lake-level and lake-isotope studies, and speleothem studies) to reconstructing paleoclimate in the US Southwest and elsewhere.

  • Tree-ring climate-human behavior project
  • Paleoclimate atlas project
  • Course readings
CLIMATE-HUMAN BEHAVIOR
  • Describe and employ conceptual models that seek to explain the influence of climate on past human behavior 
  • Describe the broad outlines of human settlement, lifeways, and land use in the San Luis Valley

  • Tree-ring climate-human behavior project
  • Course readings
​SOUTHWESTERN CLIMATE
  • Describe variation in Southwestern climate during the Holocene at multiple spatial and temporal scales
  • Tree-ring climate-human behavior project
  • Paleoclimate atlas project
  • Course readings
FIELD WORK SKILLS
  • Use a Garmin GPS to save point locations and produce a sampling location map with baselayers 
  • Be familiar with multiple coring/sampling methods in sampling sediment for paleoclimate proxy records
  • Keep detailed field observations in a field notebook for later report writing
  • Using data-driven pages in ARC GIS to create digital atlases and other multiple map presentation

  • Tree-ring climate-human behavior project
  • Playa and peat sampling field work
  • Paleoclimate atlas project