Environmental Data Science

Catalog description

This course introduces the fundamentals of data relevant in environment and sustainability, including natural sciences and social sciences. Students will gain skills to visualize, quantitatively interpret, communicate, and manage relevant data. The course begins with the basic question “what are data?” and culminates in a final team project developed around student interests to answer urgent questions in environmental science today. Projects may focus on threats to biodiversity, impacts of changes in soil moisture, public attitudes about data centers, etc. Students will present their projects at the end of the semester, using skills learned in the course for data analysis, visualization, and communication. This course is designed to be complementary to a lower-level statistics course, and to prepare students for upper-level classes in environmental science disciplines.