Geographic Perspectives on Environmental Systems Science

Catalog description

This lecture, lab and field-based course explores Earth's physical environment and its interactions with human activities. While it is intended primarily for Geography majors and minors, the subject matter and approach are sufficiently broad to be relevant to any student with interests in the environmental and natural sciences. We survey the geographic patterns and physical processes attending Earth's environmental and landscape systems; its climate, hydrology, landforms, soils and vegetation, and their mutual interactions of energy and mass (water, sediment). We adopt both spatial 'map-able' and temporal perspectives; for example, the evidence for, causes of, and impacts from, past and contemporary environmental changes such as glaciations, pluvials (wet periods), and warming. An important emphasis involves human interactions with the natural environment; how human activities are constrained by, yet also constrain processes and alter features of, the physical landscape across spatial and temporal scales. Representative topics include the burning of fossil fuels and emissions of greenhouse gases and particulates into the atmosphere, natural gas fracking and earthquakes, river diversion and dam construction, ground-water withdrawal and land subsidence, urbanization and the 'heat island' effect, land clearance and deforestation, irrigated agriculture, wildland fire, the introduction of invasive species, and coastal over-development. Our examples will come from across the globe, from areas as diverse as tropical oceans to the polar deserts. An important outcome of the course is that students become better scientific observers of Earth's environmental system and its spatio-temporal variations.