Purpose-The current UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development echoes many scholars' calls to re-envision education for sustainability. Short of a complete overhaul of education, the paper seeks to propose learning objectives that can be integrated across existing curricula. These learning objectives are organized by head, hands and heart-balancing cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains. University programs and courses meeting these learning objectives exhibit an emergent property here termed transformative sustainability learning (TSL). Design/methodology/approach-Theoretically, TSL grew from traditions of sustainability education and transformative education. Practically, TSL emerged from experimental learning collaborations sponsored by the University of British Columbia in 2003 and 2004 in an effort to enable explicit transitions to sustainability-oriented higher education. Primarily through action research, these community-based, applied learning experiences constituted cyclical processes of innovation, implementation and reflection. Findings-The paper finds: advancement of head, hands and heart as an organizing principle by which to integrate transdisciplinary study (head); practical skill sharing and development (hands); and translation of passion and values into behaviour (heart); development of a cognitive landscape for understanding TSL as a unifying framework amongst related sustainability and transformative pedagogies that are inter/transdisciplinary, practical and/or place-based; creation of learning objectives, organized to evaluate a course or program's embodiment of TSL. Originality/value-By enabling change within existing structures of higher education, the paper complements and contributes to more radical departures from the institution. The work to date demonstrates potential in applying this learning framework to courses and programs in higher education.

Irrespective of geologic age, Phanerozoic coated phosphate grains deposited beneath productive surface waters in organic-rich paleoenvironments are of only two types. Unconformity-bounded grains contain internal discordances and erosional surfaces, attributable to multiple episodes of phosphogenesis and sedimentary reworking during periods of stratigraphic condensation. Redox-aggraded grains consist of concordant concentric phosphate laminae that are intimately interlayered with circumgranular layers containing pyrite, chamosite, or barite, recording in situ diagenetic mineralization driven by changes in pore-water redox potential. Such changes can be attributed to variations in biological oxygen demand within suboxic pore-water environments resulting from fluctuations in sedimentation rate of organic carbon. Redox-aggraded grains are thus sensitive indicators of variations in organic carbon export and record changes in primary productivity and/or ecological dynamics of the surface ocean. This concept of coated-grain formation necessitates a long residence time just below the sediment-water interface. If sedimentation rate is too high, grains are rapidly buried and so removed from the zone of active phosphate precipitation. Coated phosphate grains can therefore be considered the granular equivalents of condensed beds. These concepts are equally applicable to the interpretation of other types of coated grains and concretions that contain Eh-sensitive minerals, such as iron-bearing ooids and polymineralic concretions.

Two sand sheets underlying tidal marshes at Fair Harbour, Neroutsos Inlet, and Koprino Harbour on the northwestern coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, were probably deposited by tsunamis. The sand sheets become thinner and finer-grained landward, drape former land surfaces, contain marine microfossils, are locally graded or internally stratified, and can be correlated with earthquakes that generated tsunamis in the region. 137Cs dating and historical accounts indicate that the upper sand sheet was deposited by the tsunami from the great Alaska earthquake in 1964. Radiocarbon ages on plant fossils within and on top of the lower sand sheet show that it was deposited sometime after about A.D. 1660. We attribute the lower sand sheet to a tsunami from the most recent plate-boundary earthquake on the Cascadia subduction zone about 300 yr ago, extending the documented effects of this earthquake north of the Nootka fault zone. The 1964 tsunami deposits differ little in thickness and continuity among the three marshes. In contrast, the lower sand sheet becomes thinner and less continuous to the north, implying a tsunami source south of the study area.

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