Undergraduate fieldwork

Fieldwork is central to Earth Sciences training: teaching you to observe, map, and solve problems in real-world settings. 

During your undergraduate degree, you will join fieldtrips to discover Earth’s history and how our planet works—bringing lecture material to life through hands-on experience.

We’ll travel to Arran, where you’ll witness 400 million years of the UK’s geological history as it journeyed from the southern hemisphere to its present latitude. You’ll encounter fossil lightning strikes and reptile footprints in desert sandstones, ancient volcanic eruptions and mingling magmas, as well as the remnants of ancient seafloors and rivers.

Next, we’ll head to Southwest England to explore what happens when mountains are made, uncover climate records older than the dinosaurs, and investigate what Britian was like when the dinosaurs roamed and the continents were flooded.

In third and fourth year, our fieldwork ventures further afield. You’ll see plate tectonics expressed at the surface, learn how to interpret the chemistry of rivers, make your own geological map, and explore how and why the Mediterranean dried up—and how life responded to that crisis.

We heavily subsidise the costs of all core undergraduate fieldtrips. There are various funding opportunities within the Department to support later mapping and geochemistry trips.

Independent Projects

In your third year (Part II), you’ll have the opportunity to undertake an independent fieldwork project—anywhere in the world!

Choose from two options:

• Make a geological map and interpret the geological history of an area
• Track the environmental chemistry of a location to reveal the impact of industry, weathering, or hidden geology

Past groups have gone as far afield as Australia and South Africa or made the most of the awesome opportunities right here in the UK. 

Alternative Projects

Fieldwork isn’t for everyone, so you might also get the opportunity to work on long-forgotten museum collections to map changes in ancient life, investigate heat and pressure ranges in ancient mountain belts, or use satellite data to make maps of other planets or of inaccessible regions of Earth.