Before attending the course students should have completed courses in mineralogy, stratigraphy, structural geology and igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary petrology. CSM students take the course following their junior year and have taken a field methods course as well as those mentioned above, but a field methods course is not necessary for non-CSM students. CSM students are completing Geological Engineering degrees and several of the field problems are designed to include an engineering component. For non-CSM students the exercises are slightly altered to provide a more purely geological mapping experience. Mapping faulted and folded Mesozoic sediments in a salt anticline collapse structure in Arches National Park.
Project concludes with an assessment of potential petroleum traps.
Mapping surficial deposits, correlations of end moraines, outwash and alluvial deposits. Maps prepared on air photo and topographic bases. Preparation of longitudinal profiles, transverse profiles and a full geological history of Pleistocene depositional and erosional processes. Skills developed in description of gravel deposits, soil development and quality of deposits as aggregate resources. Students will plot extensive hornfels developed in pelitic and calcareous lithologies, including local skarn deposits that have been mined for magnetite.