Earth and Environmental Systems Geography

Catalog description

Earth and Environmental Systems Geography provides a means for understanding how Earth operates naturally and in response to human action. This course takes a holistic, interdisciplinary approach, focusing on the Earth as a series of components that dynamically interact with one another via fluxes of energy and matter, biogeochemical cycles, and feedbacks. Together, the geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and the anthroposphere (humans), make up the Earth system. This course explores these systems individually as well as their interconnections from the perspective of geography, and thus touches upon aspects of more traditional disciplines including atmospheric science, geosciences, hydrology, biology, and ecology. By studying the Earth as an assemblage of interacting parts and processes, this course will provide students with a critical scientific foundation and geographical perspective for understanding some of the most pressing human-environmental issues of the 21st century, including global climate change, environmental degradation, and loss of natural biodiversity.