HISTORY OF THE DEPARTMENT
The Department of Geology is located in the geomorphology formation of Nagapattinam and established in 2017. The department offers three years B.Sc Geology from 2017 onwards. It is one of the pioneering departments which were trifurcated from erstwhile School of Earth Sciences. It does move towards to attain to the level of department of advanced studies in Geology. In addition, the department organizes seminars, workshop, and conferences in National and International level. The fundamental objective of this programme to builtayoung charming women for professional careers in the field of Geology by providing a broad education in all aspects of the geoscience and equip the students with appropriate knowledge and skills to make them employable and capable to serve the nation. The Department of Geology strives to design and develop scientific tools to explore, exploit and manage Georesources such as water, rock, minerals and soil. The students of the department are sent to reputed organizations for the summer training. Apart from the regular lecture frequent field visits have been conducting to improve the practical knowledge of the students.
UNIQUE FEATURES
- Geology is a branch of Earth Science concerned with both the liquid and solid earth the rocks of which it is composed and the processes by which they change over time.
- Geology can also include the study of the solid features of any terrestrial planet or natural satellite such as Mars or the Moon.
- Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth sciences, including hydrology and the atmospheric sciences, and so is treated as one major aspect of integrated Earth system science and planetary science.
- Geology describes the structure of the Earth on and beneath its surface, and the processes that have shaped that structure.
- It also provides tools to determine the relative and absolute ages of rocks found in a given location, and also to describe the histories of those rocks.
- By combining these tools, geologists are able to chronicle the geological history of the Earth as a whole, and also to demonstrate the age of the Earth.
- Geology provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and the Earth's past climates.
- Geologists use a wide variety of methods to understand the Earth's structure and evolution, including field work, rock description, geophysical techniques, chemical analysis, physical experiments, and numerical modelling.
- In practical terms, geology is important for mineral and hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation, evaluating water resources, understanding of natural hazards, the remediation of environmental problems, and providing insights into past climate change.
- Geology is a major academic discipline, and it is central to geological engineering and plays an important role in geotechnical engineering.
VISION
To become a centre of excellence both in teaching. The provide high quality enthusiastic earth science graduates to the nation to build a geological museum since it is very precious store of fossils and minerals. To builta good research to serve the nation.
MISSION
The mission of the Department of Geology is to provide high-quality undergraduate education, to achieve excellence in research, and to interact with society and the State by translating the implications of research through outreach and service, for the benefit of the nation and humankind.
OBJECTIVES
- To provide a broad training within the Geology through a series of core allied and electives and Non Major Elective and Value added courses such that students gain basic understanding of all science subjects in order to aid their understanding at advance level in Geology
- To train the students to use geological instruments both in the field and laboratory and to improve their ability to analyze and interpret various data.
- To provide field training to improve their knowledge in different earth system processes and give hands on exercise to boost their practical knowledge in the field of Geology
- Basic principles of Geology, Evolution of the Solar system, causes and effects of Earthquakes, Mass movements like Soil creep, Rock Creep and Solifluction, Earth’s various exogenetic processes like weathering and action of geological agents and Endogenetic processes like earthquake, volcanoes, tectonic process and mountains.
- Exercises to predict the trends of the outcrop of horizontal, vertical and inclined beds with respect to topography, Reading of solid fold and fault maps construction and problems relating to true dip and apparent dip. Fundamental and applications of surveying.
- Topographic, Geological maps and its applications, Primary and secondary structures, geometry and elements of fold, fault and joint surface recognition in the field, Foliation Mechanism and Uses of compass in field.
- Weathering of rocks and its processes, Source of Running water erosion, transportation and deposition of landforms, Underground water sources its formation and process, Origin of Glaciers and its type of movement, characteristric of Seas and Oceans.
- Palaeo life in the world, habitats of animals, indicators of evolution and migration of life forms, General morphology and classification of fossil belonging to phylum Arthropoda, Mollusca, Brachiopoda, protozoa, plant fossils and Applications of Micro palaeontology.
- Geometrical characters of crystals. Study of the symmetry elements, behavior of ordinary and polarized light in petrological microscope, Optical properties of isotropic and anisotropic minerals observed under parallel and crossed Nicols.
- Familiarize about various invertebrates,plant and microfossils and crystal models, Simple Twin Models.
- Physical and optical properties of rock forming minerals. It deals in detail about the structure, physical and chemical properties of Ortho, ring, sheet, chain and framework silicates.
- The geological time scale, principles of stratigraphy and the description of strata and their relationship to tectonics, climate, fossils along with their distribution in different parts of India from Precambrian to recent and geological boundary problems and applications of stratigraphy.
- Megascopic and Microscopic properties and their identification of the various minerals, Identification of the mineral powders by simple blow pipe tests.
- The basic principles of engineering and mining geology like Engineering properties of rocks, geological investigation of engineering site selection and various mining methods.
- The formation of rock due to Igneous activity and magma types, Classification of Igneous Rocks, Petrography and Petrogenesis various rocks, behavior of major-oxide elements in rocks, Application of Harker Diagram and Triangular Diagram variation diagrams.
- The Materials of mineral deposits its Magmatic processes, Sedimentary and metamorphic processes of economic minerals, Fossils fuels uses, origin and distribution in India and important oil fields of India.
- The origin,occurrence and movements of groundwater in various geological formations, evaluation of aquifer parameters. Groundwater quality assessment and augmentation of groundwater storage strategy in various geological settings.
- Environmental Geology, Causes, effects, strategies for their mitigation, Remote Sensing Processes and the elements involved in earth resources, Satellite Image interpretation and its Sensor characteristics.
- As an essential part of the course, students should be taken for a fieldtraining programme.
