Geology Research

musicguru5
Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:01:22 +0000

Geologic research relies heavily on case studies, primarily due to the fact that there is only one world, so you can’t really set up control and experimental planets in the way that you could, say, a drug trial. You won’t find many serious research scientists studying “the origin of some specific mountain range” just to figure out that one mountain range - they use it to test specific questions and predictions that could be applied more broadly to other geologic settings.

To use some of your preferred fields as examples, very few people research “climate change full stop.” They might look at the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or Medieval Climate Anomaly to see how the planet responded to past warming events, or they might model rainfall in the Sahel to look at the interactions between changing monsoons and desertification. Planetary scientists look at how life has adapted to extreme environments on Earth to figure out what we should look for on other planets, or apply the remote sensing techniques developed for Earth to study specific processes that might have analogues in the rest of the solar system. Earth scientists primarily rely on examples to draw broader conclusions about how the world works.

That being said, I wouldn’t be studying climate science if I didn’t think it had some potential for broader human good. On the other hand, if you are planning to go into pure research, you should also be planning on at least a Ph.D. Maybe throw in a postdoc for good measure.