本課程為國外野外課程。
With rising sea levels caused by global warming, coastal geology is becoming increasingly important. Peninsular Thailand offers exquisite opportunities to study coastal geology and coastal processes on time scales ranging from diurnal to orbital. The coasts on the western and eastern side of the peninsula includes depositional environments such as beaches, mangroves, estuaries, coastal dune systems, and aggrading strand plains. The coast also contains abundant opportunities to observe differences in erosive coastal landforms developed in sedimentary, magmatic and karst environments.
Karst geology is important for several reasons. First, karst weathering of limestone bedrock has a strong impact on the hydrogeology and water resource management by efficiently draining mountainous regions and transporting the water to lower elevations where it may emerge and become available for use again. Karst weathering also strongly influences the landscape and land use. For example, sinkholes developed in karst regions pose a significant problem for construction and city development in regions with limestone bedrock. Furthermore, cave systems formed by karst processes contain unique ecosystems and speleothems found in limestone caves have provided some of the most highly resolved paleoclimatic records of the Quaternary.
The Krabi province in southern Thailand contains some of the best and most easily accessible karst landscape in the world. During this course we will study karst landscapes, cave processes, coastal processes, and the formation of recent limestones such as coral reefs and beachrock.