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| Earth Sciences students pause for a breather on the honours excursion to Romania. (Duncan McLeish photo) |
At Dalhousie, the Department of Earth Sciences has the enviable reputation of arranging the best field trips.
In 2006, students in the honours program traveled to southern Italy to see volcanoes聽Mount Etna and Mount Vesuvius, which destroyed Pompeii in 79 AD.聽And, in 2005, students experienced Chile脮s diverse landscapes, ranging from the Andean Mountains in the east to the desert in the north.
This year, the destination was Romania. Professor Nick Culshaw and 18 students took part in the two-week trip. They explored Rosia Montana, the largest gold mine in development in Europe; took a close look at mud volcanoes, tree-stump sized eruptions of gas and water; and hiked the Carpathian Mountains, the major mountain system of Eastern Europe. Along the way, they walked around Bran Castle, briefly the home of the notorious Vlad the Impaler, king of Romania from 1456 to 1462, and the inspiration for Bram Stoker脮s Dracula.
Click here for photo essay: Earth Science students explore Romania
脪It脮s two weeks of hard-core geology everyday,鈥� says Duncan McLeish, an Earth Sciences honours student going into his fourth year. 脪It lets us see everything we脮ve talked about for the past three years.鈥�
Besides the honours excursion, there are plenty of other field trips for undergraduate Earth Sciences students. Joggins, Lawrencetown Beach, Point Pleasant Park, Tancook Island and Peggy脮s Cove are popular destinations. As well, each school year begins with a 10-day field school held at Camp Geddie on the Northumberland Strait, Antigonish Co.
脪We get to see a lot of Nova Scotia and that脮s great,鈥� says Tara Muth, another student who went to Romania. 脪But it脮s really important to experience what geology is like in other places. Field experience is so crucial. The whole point of being a geologist is getting out and seeing the rocks.鈥�