The University of Rhode Island has launched GEO557, a hands-on geoscience course built for graduate students to study coastal hazards.
Geoscience teaches topics such as beach profiling, using GPS equipment and leveling tools to observe seasonal beach changes and storm impacts, according to graduate student Sophia Motta, who has taken a course from Chris Russoniello, an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences, before.
“[Russonello] puts a big emphasis on how these are skills you’re actually going to use in the real world,” Motta said. “I knew we’d get some of that, and I mean, who doesn’t like learning real skills?”
There are many majors besides environmental and earth sciences that participate and contribute great knowledge to class during weekly discussions, according to Russoniello. Having these different opinions allows for discussion with multiple perspectives.
“We’re a broad group,” Russoniello said. “From engineering to oceanography to social sciences, the discussions show how many ways the coast is changing.”
The students have gone on three field trips so far. Two of them were to the beach to sand level, and one was to the salt marsh. The beach they visited was Moonstone Beach in South Kingston. For over 60 years, the beach has been taking sand profiles roughly every month or two to see how the surface has changed due to storms and seasons, according to Russoniello. The profiles are then used to progress construction and create better structures.
“Every single class we have a discussion based on a paper, then we talk about that,” Motta said. “But everybody brings a different point of view from it, especially the social scientists. I find it is interesting to talk to because we don’t learn much of [social science] in the physical science field.”
Social science and physical science are very similar, according to Russoniello. Typically, social scientists deal with how groups interact and relationships, while physical science looks at the physical, biological and chemical components. However, they both share the goal of understanding and explaining the world.
In Russoniello’s class, the students work on semester projects using data they collected, according to Motta. The project is usually conducted through their research done on field trips. Motta’s project is about sea-level rising based on one, three and five feet, and how it will lose salt marshes based on different situations.
“All those greenhouse gases that a marsh can help mitigate, if the marsh goes away, they will stop mitigating that piece of it,” Russoniello said.
Most think that coastal hazards are hurricanes, storms and flooding, according to Motta. Although flooding is a coastal hazard, erosion, algae blooms, groundwater salinization and greenhouse gas emissions are more of an invisible risk. Many students learned the coast has risks when they went to Moonstone Beach.
On Moonstone Beach, there is a house that was fully on land many years ago, and now due to the tide changing and sea levels rising, the house is in the sand, according to Russoniello.
This example is one of several real-world changes students in GEO557 face, highlighting how coastal processes can change and reshape local landscapes over time.
“It makes me more optimistic, because we really can make decisions that have positive impacts,” Russoniello said.
