Environmental Change: The End of the World as We Know It?

GEOG-G 185 — Fall 2021 — Themester

Location
Student Building 015 (as of 3/12/2021)
Days and Times
11:30A-12:45P Tuesdays and Thursdays
Course Description

This course is intended to equip students with a foundational understanding of environmental change. To this end, we will work and learn together - addressing along the way the complexity of social-environmental systems, sensitivity of ecosystems and the inherent challenges in understanding and planning for modern environmental change. Each week will focus on 1-2 major environmental change processes and include topics such as: climate change, tropical deforestation, desertification, coastal issues, and natural hazards. Common threads in all of these topics will pervade the whole semester; these include the use of data from observations and models, the consideration of multiple scales of change (temporal and spatial), the role of vulnerability in environmental change, and the interaction of human behaviors and choices with natural systems. Please note that this is not a traditional lecture-based class format. I will typically begin each session with a brief lecture and then students will work on an assignment based on the lecture material. This can either be done during or outside of class time, but certainly before the due date.

This class fulfills an IUB GenEd N&M credit  and CASE N&M.

Instructor: Dr. Darren Ficklin

Read an interview with Dr. Ficklin