Itinerary
The course covers nine days of intensive hands-on research. It will officially begin in Belize City at Philip Goldson International Airport. Upon arrival and after clearing customs, the group will meet inside the terminal at the Tropic Airline ticket counter for the flight to the small, southern Belize fishing village of Placencia to begin this unique educational experience. Since weather is an important factor, days may be switched around for safety purposes.
Day 1: Overview of the trip: specifically an introduction to Holocene Carbonate sediments of the Belize Shelf and pitfalls of using observations of modern carbonates for reconstruction of ancient environments.
Day 2: Observation of clastic and organic content in both river and lagoon environments. Introduction of reef building sediment producing organisms and mixing of terrigenous clastics with carbonate sediments. There are several snorkeling and sampling stops.
Day 3: Investigation of the influence of pre-existing depositional topography, structure, marine circulation, and nutrient supply on ring, pinnacle, cellular, and linear reef development within a shelf lagoonal environment. Observation of "zonation" of reef organisms and rapid facies changes that produce a major challenge for explorationists to predict reef trends with only subsurface data.
Day 4: Compare and contrast barrier reef at Carrie Bow, Tobacco and Columbus. Study distribution of back reef storm deposits and their reservoirs characteristics.
Day 5: Compare and constrast windward and leeward facies at Glovers Reef and differences between Glovers lagoonal facies with those of shelf ring reefs.
Day 7: Traverse the northern shelf from the barrier reef to the Belize mainland with special emphasis on mud cays and sediment type being transported by rivers into the northern shelf. Study tidal and supratidal milieu and discuss processes of pore occlusion and enhancement.
Day 8: Study fringing reef and windward lagoonal environments and map and interpret the origin of the Pleistocene boundstone and grainstone facies at Rocky Point,
Day 9: Final workshop, group
photograph and chartered flight to