Princeton University Freshman Seminar FRS113 (2024-2026)

Rise and Fall: Geodesy, and the History of Roman Floods

aka Rise and Fall of the Roman Floodline

New Orleans, August 2005: hurricane Katrina caused an estimated 1400 fatalities and some $100 billion in property damage. Houston, August 2017: hurricane Harvey. One hundred deaths, $125 billion in estimated damages. New Jersey, October 2012: superstorm Sandy knocks out the power of two million households, damages or destroys 350,000 homes, and claims the lives of 38 people. Italy, May 2023: fifteen people were killed and fifty-thousand left temporarily homeless due to heavy rainfall and severe flooding. Rarely a year goes by without the world experiencing another “100-year storm”. Rome: flooded multiple times in its 2,500 years of development along the banks of the Tiber—and yet, la Città eterna! To understand what the future holds, we must turn to the past. Some 125 stone plaques in Rome mark highstands and inundations dating back almost 800 years.

In this Freshman Seminar, we trace the history of the rise and fall of the river Tiber using the modern tools of geodesy. We introduce the quantitative geoscience of measuring the Earth (and planets): its shape, its rotation and deformation, and its dynamic gravity field. We discuss fundamental principles in the context of practical applications and outdoor on-campus field experiments, in preparation for the mandatory week-long Fall Break field trip to Italy!

Course participants must have a valid passport and travel visa (and good shoes!) in hand prior to September 1, 2024. All costs for travel, logistics, and subsistence are born by the University.

In Rome, we will accurately measure and map the elevation of known historical floodmarkers, placing them in the chronological context of urbanization, and interpreting them in the light of humanity’s attempts of controlling nature, learning lessons for our own parts of the world. While we focus on making first-hand, primary, contemporary measurements of historical events, we take a geological, long-term, viewpoint of the processes at work in shaping Earth’s changing surface and climate. When not using instruments to make precise measurements, or learning how to program statistical approaches to data analysis on the computer, we introduce important concepts shaping the Earth sciences today. We engage with the scientific literature and teach the skills to write and report about science in an informed non-specialist manner that is capable of reaching a wide audience.!

This is a science and technology laboratory class: students should come prepared with an aptitude for, and a willingness to learn, the quantitative aspects of scientific inquiry and numerical modeling. Scientific writing and computer programming are integral parts of this seminar and its assessment.

Department of Geosciences Professors Adam Maloof and Frederik Simons are veterans of the Freshman Seminar program: see Earth's Changing Surface & Climate, which was built around field work in California, Earth's Environments & Ancient Civilizations, which conducted geoarcheological field work in Cyprus, State of the Earth: Shifts & Cycles, whose research sites were in France and Spain, and Earth: Crops, Culture, and Climate — in Italy.