Earth & Space Sciences

This course examines many aspects of environmental threat today, most especially climate change. It begins with basic principles and introductory concepts and distinctions. This course explores the impacts of global change on the atmosphere, oceans, and land surfaces with focus given to each sphere in turn.

This course provides research training for exchange students. Students work on a research project under the guidance of assigned faculty members. Through a full-time commitment, students improve their research skills by participating in the different phases of research, including development of research plans, proposals, data analysis, and presentation of research results. A pass/no pass grade is assigned based a progress report, self-evaluation, midterm report, presentation, and final report.

This course reviews key events in the history of life and earth during 4.6 billion years, including evolutionary theory, beginnings of life, the Cambrian world, the Paleozoic seas, the invasion of land, the rise of the reptiles, dinosaurs, and birds, the Tertiary world and the rise of primates and man.

The Arctic is expected to become more important in the coming decades as climate change makes natural resources and transport routes more accessible creating threats to fragile ecosystems and societies as well as economic opportunities. Satellite data collected since 1979 shows that both the thickness of the ice in the Arctic and range of sea ice have decreased substantially, especially during the summer months. The melting of the ice facilitates natural resource exploration in the high north. U.S. Geological Survey estimates from 2008 suggest that 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and 30 percent of undiscovered natural gas reserves are located in the Arctic Circle. Moreover, the retreating and thinning of the ice opens up new trade routes. This course enables and relies on the participation of graduate and advanced undergraduate students in the Arctic Circle Assembly conference in Harpa, Reykjavik. Students are required to attend the Arctic Circle Assembly. Students have to attend one class shortly before the Assembly and one class shortly after the Assembly.

This course explores the geological record of key groups of plant and animals, and what this reveals about their evolutionary biology. The course also discusses how this date informs on the macroevolution of these groups and the different applications in earth and environmental science, including relative dating of rocks, reconstructing paleoenvironments including how ecosystems respond to environmental change at local to global scales.