Geophysics Department

GPM601: PHYSICAL OCEANOGRAPHY AND MARINE GEOPHYSICS Credits: 4

Section I: PHYSICAL OCEANOGRAPHY Credits: 2

1. Physical properties of Sea Water: Chlorinity, salinity, thermal properties, density, pressure, optical properties, transmission of sound, water masses, T-S diagram, variation of salinity, heat budget of the ocean, Bowen ratio.
2. Acquisition of Ocean Data: Salinity measurements, Nansen bottle, light in sea, measurement of SST, reversing thermometers, Bathy thermograph, current meters.
3. Ocean Currents: Hydrodynamic equations of motion, inertia currents, geostrophic currents in homogeneous and stratified ocean; relative and slope currents, thermohaline currents, drift current in homogeneous water, Ekman theory, the major surface current systems of the ocean, upwelling and sinking with special reference to Indian ocean and their effects.
4. Waves: Wave velocity, group velocity, theory of surface gravity waves, short and long waves, generation and growth of wind waves, long waves in canals, standing waves in closed basins, seiches, swell, breakers and surf, internal waves, storm surges, tsunami.
5. Tides: Tide generating forces, principal harmonic components, theories of tides, description and types of tides, prediction of tides, tidal gauges.
6. Air Sea Interaction: Structure of the boundary layer, exchange coefficients and profiles, transfer of heat and water vapour.

Section II: MARINE GEOPHYSICS Credits: 2

1. Ocean and Seas: classification, growth and decline of ocean basins, turbidity currents, submarine sedimentation and stratigraphy, physiography and divisions of the sea floor, continental shelves, slopes, aprons and abyssal planes, occurrence of mineral deposits and hydrocarbon in offshore.
2. Gravity and magnetic Surveys: Types of magnetometer used in a survey ship, towing cable and fish, data collection their reduction and interpretation, underwater gravity measurements, ship borne gravimeters, Graf sea gravimeter, vibrating string accelerometer, Lacoste Romberg gravimeter, problems with shipborne gravity measurements, survey procedure, data reduction and interpretation.
3. Seismic Surveys: Marine energy sources, Finger, Boomer, Sparker, explodor, airgun, vapour cook etc. hydrophones active section and streamer towing gear, shooting methods near offshore and offshore exploration techniques, analysis of seismic data their processing and interpretation, refraction survey with Sonobuoy’s and interpretation.
4. Radio Positioning System: Short range and long range Doppler Sonar, satellite navigation, GPS & GIS.

Suggested Books:

1. Duxbury: The Earth and its Oceans
2. WMO No.364: Marine Meteorology
3. Sverdrup, Johnson & Fleming: The Oceans
4. Defant: Physical Oceanography, Vols. I and II
5. McLellen: Elements of Physical Oceanography
6. Jacob, Russel & Willson: Physics and Geology
7. Dobrin & Savit: Introduction to Geophysical prospecting
8. Telford et.al.: Applied Geophysics

GPM602(P-Z): ELECTIVE PAPER Credits: 4

GPM602 (P-Z): [ELECTIVE PAPER]

GPM602P: ADVANCED HYDROLOGY

1. Surface water, evaporation formulae and theories of surface flows, safe yield, floods, estimation of flood flow, method of unit hydrograph, synthetic hydrographs, their application, flood routing through rivers and reservoirs, statistical methods in hydrology.

2. Water resources: Partially saturated soils, Darcy’s law in unsaturated medium, derivation of Darcy’s law from Navier stokes theorem, different forms of unsaturated flow equation, nature of the physical parameters in unsaturated flow, infiltration theories, concepts of diffusion, dispersion and redistribution in groundwater, groundwater hydrographs, application of finite difference and finite element techniques, simulation method, analog and digital modelling of aquifers, tracer techniques.

3. Water Management: urban hydrology, practical aspects of flow of groundwaters to wells, analysis of pumping test, conservation and utilization of water and its management.

Suggested Books:

1. Ward: Principles of Hydrology
2. Todd: Groundwater Hydrology
3. Heath & Trainer: Introduction to Groundwater Hydrology
4. Guide Book on Nuclear Techniques in Hydrology
5. Dury: Face of the Earth
6. Chow: Handbook of Applied Hydrology
7. Childs: Introduction to Soil Water Physics
8. Walton: groundwater Evaluation
9. Tolman: Groundwater.

GPM 602Q: ADVANCED SEISMOLOGY

1. Measurement and characteristics of strong ground motion, dispersion of surface waves, ray theory, travel-time curves for body waves and inversion techniques, tomography, 3-D earth structure, attenuation, diffraction and scattering of seismic waves, fault asperities inferred from seismic waves, crust and mantle structures inferred from surface waves, broad band seismometry, and recent Indian earthquakes.
2. Seismic arrays, tectonic and volcanic earthquakes and their characteristics, seismic hazard, risk analysis, seismic gaps and regions of high seismic potential, earthquake source studies, earthquake processes and source modeling, earthquake prediction problem, application of fractals and chaotic dynamics in seismology, non-linear propagation and geodynamics.

Suggested Books:

1. Kanamori & Baschi: Earthquakes: Observation, theory and Interpretations
2. Ewing: Elastic Waves in Layered Media
3. Bath: Mathematical Aspects of Seismology
4. Bullen: Introduction to Seismology
5. Aki & Richard: Quantitative Seismology, Vol. I and II
6. Slawomir & Andrezej: An Introduction to Mining Seismology.

GPM 602R: REMOTE SENSING AND GIS

1. Fundamentals of Remote Sensing: Energy sources, principles of solar and terrestrial radiation, laws of radiation, energy interactions, spectral patterns and signatures.

2. Characteristics of aerial photographic imagery, photogrammetry, airphoto interpretation for terrain evaluation.

3. Application in geological mapping and mineral resource evaluation, concepts of GIS and applications, theory and principles, structural concepts, geological interpretation and its ambiguity, geological guides, characteristics for mineral resource.

4. Application to water resources evaluation and soil moisture determination; watershed parameters, physiographic measurements, surface water, flood plain delineation, precipitation, ice and snow monitoring, evaporation and evapotranspiration, subsurface water information system and analysis.

5. Developments of satellites and remote sensing developments in India.

6. Development in remote sensing platforms, constant level and tethered balloons, aircrafts, rockets and satellites.

7. Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, circular and elliptical orbits of satellites, polar, geosynchronous and geostationary satellites.

8. Types of sensors, photographic and TV cameras, visible and infrared sensing, radiometer, side looking radar.

9. Historical development, various meteorological satellite system, INSAT system, data acquisition system, Automatic Picture Transmission (APT).

10. Remote sensing application in meteorology , visible and infrared pictures of clods, recognition of various clouds and weather systems, estimation of surface temperature and cloud tops, vertical profiles of temperature and water vapour, wind estimation, role of weather satellites in global coverage of observation in synoptic and climatological studies.

Suggested Books:

1. Barret & Curtis: Introduction to Environmental Remote Sensing.
2. Lillesand & Kiefer: Remote Sensing and Image Interpretation.
3. Reeves (Ed.): Manual of Remote Sensing, Vols. I and II, American Soc. Photogrammetry.
4. Siegal & Gellospie: Remote Sensing in Geology.
5. Teekshadulu & Rajan: Remote Sensing , Indian Academy of Sciences.
6. Kidder & Vonder Haar: Satellite Meteorology an Introduction.

GPM602S: ENVIRONMENTAL GEOPHYSICS

1. Earth and environment, elements of environment, man and environment.
2. Atmosphere : Origin, composition and structure, the troposphere as an Environmental layer, air pollution, pollutants and its impact on weather, the ozone shield, green house effects and role of trace gases, global warming, acid rains.
3. Hydrosphere: Ocean and environment, the hydrologic cycle and global water balance, surface water hydrology, water pollutants and their effects on surface and ground water, heavy mentals (Hg, Cd and As) in ground water, their detection and abatements.
4. Mineral resources and environment, impact of mining and mineral resources.
5. Energy and Environment: Coal, oil and gas, geothermal energy, nuclear energy, solar energy.
6. Role of geophysics in Environmental protection.

Suggested Books:

1. Jorgensen: Principles of Environmental Sciences and Technology
2. Keller: environmental geology
3. Ramade & Strahler: Environmental Geoscience-Interaction Between Natural System and Man
4. Tyler & Mitter: Jr. Environmental Science
5. Sharma: Environmental Geophysics

GPM602T: GEOMAGNETISM

1. Earth’s Magnetic Field: Internal and external fields, main field and variational field, components of the main field, magnetic and geomagnetic coordinates, measurement and recording of the main field: measurements of horizontal, vertical, declination, inclination and total field, magnetometers and variographs, Theories of the earth’s main magnetic field: A brief introduction of the various of the main field and its secular variation, dynamo theory of the main field, Geomagnetic indices: Ci, CR, Ks, Kp indices, concepts of quiet and disturbed days.
2. Transient Variations: Definition, computation, morphological features, current systems and causes of solar quiet day variation ( Sq ), disturbance daily variation SD, storm time variation Dst and lunar variation L, Morphology of the equatorial electrojet, geomagnetic storms: morphological features of geomagnetic storms, gradual and sudden commencement storms, DS and Dst fields, ring current, Van allen belts theories of the geomagnetic storms.
3. The Sun, Sunspots and Solar Flares: A brief introduction of the structure of the sun, morphological features and classification of sun sport indices, morphological features of solar flares, classification of solar flares, Morphological feature, classification and causes of auroras, Morphological features, classification, observation and causes of geomagnetic micropulsation, morphological features, composition, structure and production of various layers of the ionosphere, sudden ionospheric disturbances, Earth currents, its measurements, morphological features and interrelation with geomagnetism.

Suggested Books:

1. Chapman & Bartels: Geomagnetism
2. Matsushita & Campbel: Physics of the Geomagnetic Phenomena
3. Jacob: Earth’s Core and Geomagnetism
4. Mitra: Upper Atmosphere

GPM602U: NON-LINER SYSTEMS IN GEOPHYSICS

1. Kinematics of deformation – the deformation gradient tensor, the strain tensor, homogeneous deformations, deformation of surface and volume elements, material and spatial coordinates, analysis of stress, Cauchy’s equation of motion, balance laws, constitutive equations for elastic and thermoelasticity.
2. Introduction to constructive aspects of bifurcation and implicit function theorem, imperfect bifurcation, bifurcation and non-linear eigen value problems.
3. Non-Linear stability and folding of rock strata, convection in magma chambers and mantle, core convection and dynamo theory, earthquakes and chaos.
4. Non-linear elastic waves and solutions, group velocity, dynamical treatment, fractals and multifractals measures in geophysics.

Suggested Books:

1. Alkin & Fex: An Introduction to the theory of Elasticity
2. Fang: Foundation of Solid Mechanics
3. Mal & Singh: Deformation of Elastic soils
4. Spencer: Continuum Mechanics
5. Robinowitz: Application of Bifurcation Theory
6. Atherton: Stability of Non-Linear System
7. Bhatnagar: Non-Linear Waves in One-Dimensional Dispersive Systems

GPM603V: GEOTOMOGRAPHY AND COMPUTER MODELLING

1. Concept of Tomography: Inversion, linear and non-linear inversion, inversion technique-traditional, Monte-Carlo, Backus-Gilbert, Tau method, non-linear least square, ray tomography, diffraction tomography, borehole tomography, 2D and 3D imaging, applications in various branches of geophysics.
2. Finite element and finite difference methods and their formulations, numerical modelling, super computers, Lax- Wondroff second order scheme, MacDormack fourth order scheme, stability conditions, computer simulation of P-SV, SH and acoustic cases and other geophysical problems.

Suggested Books:

1. Mitchell: Computational Methods in Partial Differential Equations
2. Noye: Numerical Simulation fluid Motion
3. Krishnamurthy & Sen: Computer Based Numerical Algorithms
4. Gold & Rader: Digital Processing of Signals
5. Boarding er. al.: Application of Seismic Travel Time tomogrphy
6. Dines& Lytle: Computerized Geophysical Tomography
7. Wu et. al.: Diffraction Tomography and Multisource Holography Applied to Seismic Imaging.
8. Aiyer et. al.: Geotomography.

GPM602W: MODERN TECHIQUES IN SEISMIC INTERPRETATION AND MIGRATION

1. Seismic Sources: Explosive and non-explosive sources.

2. Seismic Refraction Method: Travel time equations for simple one layer case and for variable velocity case, expressions for dipping layer and faulted bed cases, Gardener delay time method, hidden layer problems, field techniques for refraction survey, fan shooting.

3. Seismic Reflection Method: The travel time equations for horizontally layered medium, expressions for dipping interfaces, field techniques for reflection survey, split spread, end on spread, broad side configurations, 2D, 3D and 4D configurations, common depth point technique, presentation formats of seismograms, selection of field survey parameters.

4. Data processing sequence, static and dynamic correction, weathering and datum corrections, CDP stacking, migration and depth section preparation.

5. Velocity Depth Determination: Velocity-depth relation from measurements in boreholes, velocity depth relation from surface observations, T²-X², T-?T and hyperbola method.

6. Noise Elimination Method: The structure of noise and its classification using frequency and spatial filters (arrays), multiples identification, suppression of multiples VSP.

7. Mapping of hydrocarbon bearing and water bearing structures, gas hydrates, pattern recognition, thin bed modelling, seismic lithologic modelling, geological interpretation, location of stratigraphic traps, direct detection of hydrocarbons, wave equation migration and its various forms, artificial intelligence, artificial neural network (ANN) and gas detection using AVO analysis.

Suggested Books:

1. Dobrin & Savit: Introduction to geophysical Prospecting
2. Telford et.al.: Applied Geophysical
3. Keary & Brooks: Introduction to Geophysical Exploration
4. Waters: Reflection Seismology
5. Robinson: Basic Exploration Geophysics
6. Scheriff: Seismic Stratigraphy
7. Lavergne: Seismic Methods.

GPM602X: ADVANCED PHYSICAL METEORLOGY

1. Physics of tropical monsoon clouds, precipitation mechanism from convective, stratiform and orographic clouds, artificial modification of the precipitation, artificial dissipation of fog and low cloud, atmospheric electoral and boundary layer processes.
2. Precipitation chemistry, aid rain, atmospheric aerosols and trace gases, tropospheric chemistry.
3. Atmospheric chemistry, dynamics of the middle atmosphere and troposphere-stratosphere coupling, monsoon activity, climatic change, measurement of atmospheric minor constituents and climatic effects.
4. Physics of the Upper Atmosphere: Composition and structure, energy exchanges by collisions, transport processes, mean circulation and eddy transport, the ionosphere, composition and general properties, observational methods, aurora and air glow, noctilucent clouds, nacreous clouds.
5. Atmospheric Visibility: Attenuation of light by the atmosphere, the air-light and visual range in daytime, visibility of point light sources at night, objective measurement of visual range, oblique visual range.
6. Meteorological Acoustics: Doppler effect, effect of temperature and humidity on sound velocity, sound path in a calm atmosphere, effect of wind on sound propagation, attenuation of sound, propagation of sound through stratosphere, sound origination from meteorological elements.
7. Meteorological Physics: Coronas and related phenomenon, twilight phenomenon, colour and polarisation of sky light.

Suggested Books:

1. Johnson: Physical Meteorology
2. Mason: Physics of Cloud
3. Dobson: Exploring the Atmosphere
4. Retallack: Compendium of Meteorology Vol. I, Part-III, Meteorology. W.M.O. 364
5. Baton: Radar Observes the Weather
6. Kidder & Vonder Harr: Satellite Meteorology
7. Mitra: The Upper Atmosphere.

GPM602Y: APPLIED METEOROLOGY

1. Aviation meteorology: Requirements of climatological data for sitting of runways, meteorological observations and forecasts required for aircraft operations, organization of KAO, DGCA and air traffic control, coordination between MFT and ATC, special observations for aviation, METAR, SPECT, TREND, SIGMENT, aviation forecasts and warnings, documentation and briefing for national and international flights, aviation climatology.
2. Maritime Meteorology: Voluntary observing flight routine and special observations from ship at sea weather bulletins for shipping, storm warning bulletins, storm signals at ports, weather routing of ships, climatological atlas for oceanic regions, atlas of storm tracks.
3. Biometeorology: Thermal balance between heat production and heat loss effect of climatic factors, influence of weather and diseases caused by viruses, bacteria and metabolic disorders, acclimatization, climate and insect pests, thermal comfort and comfort indices, urban and building climatology.
4. Environmental Pollution: Extent of pollution, atmospheric ventilation, meteorological factors affecting the concentration of pollutants, monitoring for prevention control of pollution UNEP.
5. Atmospheric Transport and Diffusion: Classical diffusing theory (K-theory), similarity theory, theory of turbulence, Plum rise, short term modelling and prediction technique for pollutants.
6. Effects of air pollution on climate, human health.

Suggested Books:

1. Stern: Air pollution
2. HMSO, London: Handbook of Aviation Meteorology
3. Munn: Biometeorology
4. WMO Note: Urban Climatology
5. WMO Technical Note: Air Pollutants, Meteorology and Plant Injury.

GPM602Z: ADVANCED CLIMATOLOGY

1. Climatic classification based on atmospheric circulation and geographical conditions. Genetic classification, classification based on the effect originated at the surface. Types of climate, Various classifications of climate, Koepen, thornthwaite, Handdel etc.
2. Function and physical description of the climates of the different continents and ocean.
3. Radiation properties of natural surfaces, radiation in crops forest canopies, cities, vertical variation and distribution of various climatic elements, heat exchange and conduction near soil surface, atmospheric pollution.
4. Elements of bioclimatology, urban building climatology, climatic change, fundamental meteorological factors affecting the climate, past climate revealed by meteorological observation, methods of palaeoclimatology, possible causes of climatic change, influence of man on climatic changes, climatological statistics.
5. Introduction to climate system, role of green house gases, global warming, climatic change and its impacts on agriculture.
6. Asian Summer Monsoon: Global teleconnections, basic concepts of climatic modelling, energy cycle, Tropical Ocean and their role in climate control.
7. Physical processes in general circulation.

Suggested Books:

1. Miller: Climatology
2. Lamb: Climate Present, Past and Future
3. Barry & Parry: Synoptic Climatology
4. Stringer: Fundamentals of Climatology
5. Winter School on Climate Change and its Impacts, IIT, Delhi.

GPM603: SEMINAR Credits: 2

Each student is required to prepare a seminar note (about 1500 words) in the form of a report and give oral lecture (40 minutes) on the topic assigned by the Head of the Department in consultation with respective supervisor.

GPM604A/GPM604B: COMPEHENSIVE VIVA- VOCE Credits: 3

At the end of sixth Semester, each student will be examined in this paper on the entire M.Sc. (Tech.) Geophysics courses by a Board consisting of three internal and one external examiner in each specialization.

GPM605A/GPM605B: PROJECT WORK/DISSERTATION Credits: 8

During sixth semester, students may go for 2-4 weeks for their Project work/dissertation at the laboratories of their field of specialization or with field parties depending upon the facilities in the summer vacation. For dissertation work, the co-supervisor is also allowed. The topic of their project work/dissertation will be decided towards the end of the fourth Semester by the Head of the Department in consultation with the supervisors.