Introduction to ecological principles, history of conservation, natural resource management, human impacts on the environment, and environmental ethics. For all students interested in an introductory natural resource or environmental science elective.
A broad interdiscplinary look at our marine world and its relationships to our climate, biosphere, and Earth history. Topics include hurricanes, origins of life and atmosphere, geologic processes under the sea (including tsunamis), dialog of the sea and climate, marine life of all types, the crisis in our fisheries, beaches and coral reefs, and man's use and mis-use of the sea.
An introduction to earth and atmospheric sciences based on depictions in popular and documentary cinema. Topics will include: earthquakes, volcanoes, severe weather, dinosaurs, climate change, evolution, meteor impacts, and earth's interior. Lectures will focus on discussion of the relevant science, separating fact from fiction, and disaster management. Assignments will consist of viewing of films and answering questions about the science contained therein.
Dynamic Earth investigates the fascinating inter-relationships of climate, oceans, geologic processes, and life on earth. The lecture, labs, and course textbook employ a systems-based approach to examine Earth Science at the global scale. The course explores how the Earths processes we observe today have connections and beginnings deep in earths distant geologic past. We discuss how processes born from outside our planet and solar system can change the course of life on Earth; and explore how human activities are contributing to global environmental change, including climate change. The course consists of lectures on Monday and Wednesday and includes one three hour lab per week. A 1-2 day field trip where we visit local geologic sites and the National Weather Service in Indianapolis is also given.
An introduction to environmental science, including issues such as air and water pollution, toxic waste disposal, soil erosion, natural hazards, climate change, energy resources, and environmental planning. Includes extensive in-class discussion of case studies.
An elementary treatment of the physical structure of the atmosphere and the dynamical conditions that lead to the development of convective clouds, thunderstorms, and severe weather (including tornadoes, hail, wind, rain, lightning, and flash floods). This course will also focus on storm climatology, the socioeconomic impact of severe weather, as well as prediction, detection, warnings, and safety procedures. Analysis of severe weather events will include tornado movies and case studies of ground/aerial surveys of storm damage.
This course provides an international and multidisciplinary perspective on food security and resources. Case studies that represent different regions of the world will be the focus of the course. The case studies, discussed in the context of the Millennium Development Goals, will help students gain knowledge and understanding of regional variations of food security and resources, sustainable development and economic growth throughout the world. In addition, separate segments will deal with various components influencing food security. These include segments on the physical environment and global climate change, economic systems and global trade, and social and demographic changes. Student performance will be evaluated based on four quizzes, three midterm exams, and a final project.
To understand climate we describe and synthesize physical processes in the atmosphere and their coupling to the ocean, ice, and land. We quantitatively explore climatology with an equal balance of physical principles and scrutiny of available modern data. Topics include: visualization of atmospheric/land surface/oceanographic climatological data sets; theories of climate dynamics; and climate change. Beginning with radiative balance and simple energy balance models, the course progresses toward understanding the effects of radiative-convective forcing and rotation on the fluid envelopes. Analysis of data in an interactive computer-enabled environment is an important part of the course. By the end of this course, the student should know how the Earth System behaves at large scales and grasp the physical understandings of why.
nalysis and assessment of the nature of global environmentalism, its connections with other new social movements, and its impact on domestic and international politics worldwide, with particular attention to green political parties and nongovernmental organizations.
This course provides an introduction to environmental and natural resource economics and policy. Lectures and homework assignments provide insights into economic aspects of a wide range of environmental issues including air and water pollution, optimal forest and fisheries management, links between the economy and the environment, and global warming. Students learn how to examine environmental and natural resource issues from an economic perspective, and learn how to apply basic tools of economic analysis to a wide range of environmental issues.
Application of remote sensing and spatial databases for observing and managing land resources within the Earth System; analysis and interpretation of remotely sensed data in combination with field observations and other data sources; conceptualization and design of a global earth resources information system.
The course is interdisciplinary and tackles, along with basic ecology, the economics of valuing ecosystem services, the engineering of alternative energy, the atmospheric science of climate change, and the sociology of the demographic transition in human societies. A theme running through the course is the practical problem of science literacy in society, including how and whether scientific knowledge impacts environmental policy.
Models play an increasingly important role in scholarship across many disciplines, including atmospheric science, economics, and political science. Yet models remain controversial and subject to criticism despite their prevalence, especially in the area of climate change. Modelers in all disciplines are accused of oversimplifying the world, illegitimately presenting their results as "reality" or even manipulating their equations so as to produce biased outcomes. Thus, the goal of this course is to better educate students in the use and misuse of modeling across disciplines, so that they will be better builders and consumers of integrated, complex models of coupled human/natural systems. Students will work in interdisciplinary teams on semester-long projects to generate policy recommendations based on their own analysis of output from a suite of scientific, economic, and political models of climate change impacts.
The political problems of natural resource use and environmental quality. Theoretical foundations for environmental policy and its evaluation, the political context of environmental policy, principles of administering environmental policies, and the significance of international law and institutions for environmental policies.
An introduction to the chemistry of the earth's atmosphere. Covers evolution of the earth's atmosphere, its physical and chemical structure, its natural chemical composition and oxidative properties, and human impacts, including increasing tropospheric ozone, decreasing stratospheric ozone, climate change, and acidic deposition.
This interdisciplinary course combines topics of intense development in time series analysis, extreme value theory, and nonlinear dynamics to understand predictability and other weather and climate issues.
Stable isotopes and radionuclides have been used in studies of the water cycle for more than 50 years, and form the foundation of methods now commonly used for tracing hydrological fluxes, dating groundwaters, and probing the biogeochemistry of hydrological systems. This mixed-format course (~2/3 lecture, 1/3 discussion) will introduce isotopic methods used in water cycle research, with a focus on critical review of the theoretical basis for each method, and provide opportunities for group discussion of current literature employing these methods. Students will develop an understanding of quantitative analysis of isotopic data through several problem sets involving recent data from the literature. By the end of the course, students should have theoretical and operational understanding of major methods in isotope hydrology for applications such as: quantification of large-scale recycling; evaporation/transpiration partitioning ; identifying recharge (runoff) sources and flowpaths in groundwater (surface water) systems; hydrograph separation and transit time estimation; distinguishing sources of water used by plants; groundwater dating; and reconstruction of catchment water balance (paleoclimate).
This course educates students in the use, selection, and design of instrumentation and data acquisition systems for agricultural, food, environmental and biological systems. Measurement of position (GPS), force, pressure, power, torque, flow, temperature and environmental sensors will be emphasized. Labs will focus on building and using measurement systems, and programming PC computers for data acquisition and analysis.
This course educates students in the use, selection, and design of instrumentation and data acquisition systems and biological systems. Measurements of position (GPS), force, pressure, power, torque, flow, temperature are emphasized. Labs will focus on building and using measurement systems, and programming PC computers.
Data volumes in the environmental field are increasing with the advent of sensor networks, an increase in the number of high-resolution and multispectral remote sensing images, and the increasing use of distributed models. To make the most from these new and varied data streams students require a new tool box of skills so that they can handle data in a wide variety of formats, large numbers of files or even just a few very large files. This course educates students in the use, manipulation and analysis of environmental data by introducing them to scripting languages (e.g. c-shell, python), data types (e.g. ASCII, binary, NetCDF), databases (e.g. XML, DBF) and data visualization (e.g. GMT, ArcMap) as well as techniques for checking data quality, handling time series and spatial data, and filling missing data. Students will manipulate, check and fill data from a variety of sources, use that data as input to a distributed hydrologic model and analyze model output. Course will be taught as a 1 hour lecture followed by a 1 hour computer lab, twice weekly. All skills learned should be applicable to almost any computer operating systems, but most work for this class will be done within the Linux environment.