ENVS 101 - Assessing Human Impacts on the Environment; (4 semester hours); J. Ritter
A systematic, interdisciplinary approach to evaluating the impact of human activity on the natural environment. The course will focus on a local environmental problem or issue. By studying the human impact on the local environment, students will be challenged to find a balance between doing nothing to an environment and doing nothing for it. The lecture and discussion portion of the course will focus on understanding the physical environment from the instructor’s perspective as a geologist and hydrologist. The perspectives of other scientists and other disciplines will be represented by invited speakers. The diversity of these perspectives, the roles these people play relative to local or regional environmental issues, and their significance relative to local environmentalism will be integrated with a semester-long class project. The laboratory portion of the course will introduce students to techniques and methodologies used by environmental scientists to recognize, assess, or predict human impacts on the natural environment particularly as they apply to the class project. The lab portion of the course will be computer-intensive, from collecting and downloading data to preparing a final report and presentation; a geographic information system (GIS) will also be employed to organize, visualize, and model data associated with the class project. Writing Intensive.
