Free online courseStructural Geology: Mapping, Stereonets, Stress, Strain, Faults and Folds

Course Description

Structural geology is the toolkit geoscientists use to translate deformed rocks into a clear story about Earth processes. In this free online course, you will build practical skills for describing and analyzing the geometry of lines and planes, connecting field observations to maps, and moving confidently between hand calculations, visual reasoning, and quantitative methods. Whether you are preparing for exams in geography and Earth science, strengthening field and lab competence, or aiming toward careers in environmental work, engineering geology, mining, geotechnical studies, or subsurface energy, you will gain a structured way to think about deformation from outcrop scale to crustal scale.

The course develops your ability to interpret orientation data and convert it into meaningful geologic insight. You will practice using conventions that working geoscientists rely on, tackle common mapping challenges such as thickness and depth, and learn how uncertainty and error propagation affect conclusions drawn from measurements. Step by step, you will connect points, traces, contours, and cross sections into coherent 3D interpretations, including classic problems used to infer planar surfaces and to visualize how layers intersect topography.

You will also learn to use stereonets as a powerful visual calculator for structural problems, strengthening intuition about poles, rotations, and geometric relationships that are hard to grasp from numbers alone. From there, the course links geometry to mechanics, guiding you through the essentials of strain and stress, including how to represent them, how to distinguish continuous from discontinuous deformation, and how Mohr circles clarify what changes under different conditions.

Finally, you will apply this foundation to the structures that shape landscapes and influence hazards and resources: faults and folds. By tying kinematics, stress regimes, and interpretation methods to map and subsurface data, you will practice the reasoning used to infer movement, assess reactivation potential, and recognize fold patterns. With short exercises integrated throughout, you will finish with a stronger, more employable command of structural analysis and geologic interpretation.