Geophysics: Material

440 Introduction to Geophysics (Spring 2006)

Here are all of my electronic lecture presentation as Microsoft Powerpoint (PPT) files. These are provided for additional information and reference only and are not meant to replace your lecture notes, nor the textbook.

Also, please don't distribute these files. Various references and proper source citations have been omitted for convenience.

Lecture slides

• Global seismicity and plate tectonics
• Plate motions
• SCEC Crustal Motion Map for Southern California
• Paleomagnetism
• Seismic waves
• Geoid and gravity anomalies
• Heat flow in oceanic lithosphere
• Mantle convection
• Review of thermal state
• Earth's Interior

Problem sets

Handouts and other class material

• Mathematica notebook with the equations governing the chaotic, coupled-rotating-disk Rikitake dynamo. (You can view notebooks with Mathematica for free, but will need a running version of this software to perform actual computations.)
• Math handout on linear algebra and calculus.
• Math handout on plane waves.
• Mid term review questions handout.
• Gravity anomalies handout.
• 1-D thermal diffusion handout and Matlab script
• Final review questions handout.
• Fieldtrip to Death Valley
  • Field trip handout
  • Field trip pictures

Web resources

• Intro:
  • Metadata: Earth science link collections:
    • Utrecht Tectonophysics collection
    • Jules Vernes Explorer at UNAVCO
  • Tour of the solar system 1 (Arnett)
  • Tour of the solar system 2 (Hamilton)
• Plate tectonics:
  • Plate motion calculator at Utrecht University
  • Links to Tanja Atwater's animations of Western US tectonic history: scales: large, intermediate, and small.
  • PEPI paper on plumes on Earth and Venus (Ernst & Desnoyer, 2004): download PDF
  • Courtillot et al. (2002) plumes & hotspots review paper (PDF)
• Magnetic field
  • Buffett (2002) Science review paper of core and dynamo (PDF)
  • Roberts & Glatzmaier (2000) review of geodynamo theory
• Isotopes and geochemistry
  • Link to PDF of Al Hofmann's Nature (1997) review paper on Mantle geochemistry: the message from oceanic volcanism, available from USC computers.
• Oceanic lithosphere and convection
  • Paper combining seismology and geodynamics to explain flattening of old plates by reheating Ritzwoller, M.H., N.M. Shapiro, and S. Zhong, Cooling history of the Pacific lithosphere, EPSL, 226, 69-84, 2004.
  • Bercovici et al. (2000) review paper on mantle convection and plates
  • Hieronymus' (2004) paper or transform faults and micro-plate formation.
  • Earthquakes in oceanic plates
    • Stein on Cochran et al. (2004) paper on triggering of subduction thrust events by tides.
    • McGuire et al. (2005) paper on forecasting of transform fault earthquakes.
  • Movies and plate-style convection movies, pages, and papers:
    Allen McNamara's 2-D and 3-D convection movies
    • My own, simple 2-D Rayleigh Benard convection movies
    • Stephane Labrosse's 3-D, Cartesian convection models
    • Ron Trompert's 3-D, Cartesian convection models
    • One of Shijie Zhong's 3-D, spherical convection simulations, this model has prescribed weak zones at the surface that impose plate-like flow.
    • Paul Tackley's 2000a and 2000b papers on plate generation. These papers nicely discuss how the Earth might generate the plate-style convection we see. They also have nice 3-D, cartesian figures of convection.
    • Paul Tackley's collection of convection movies at UCLA
    • Caltech convection movies
• Matlab
  • Mathworks Helpdesk
  • Magali Billen's intro to Matlab