GEOG206: The Global Environment

Syllabus

The Earth is in ceaseless motion with interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere that setting the stage for the world around us. The Global Environment introduces students to these spheres and their interconnectedness which makes Earth a livable planet. This course is developed for a broad audience, irrespective of background, and aims to give students the tools necessary to understand their physical environment. The lab component of the course gives students hands on experience with authentic and simulated data and emphasizes hypothesis testing throughout each assignment.

Past and Future Climate Change

Syllabus in development

Earth’s climate is constantly changing - ice sheets once covered much of the Northern Hemisphere 21,000 years ago and crocodiles onced lived near the South Pole ~250 million years ago. Yet, human-caused climate change is occurring faster than any climate change experienced within the last 50 million years. This class looks into Earth’s past to understand how climate evolves and how biological systems have responded to past climate changes. This perspective is used to contextualize contemporary climate change and provide students with the tools necessary to understand projected climate change. The lab component of this course provides students with hands-on experience with various types of proxy climate data which culminates in comparisons against student-run paleoclimate simulations from EzGCM.