Earth & Space Sciences

This course examines the basic overview of the solar system and its structure. It covers remote sensing data from Mercury, Mars, and the Moon; using Google Earth; age, morphology and development history of Earth; and planetary interior, surface, and atmospheric processes and their impact on planetary evolution and habitability.

This course introduces and covers the fundamental yet significant topics on the basic workings of Earth System Science, the interactions between its sub-systems, the past, current, and future conditions of Earth's environments, as well as modern human activities and it's interactions with Earth's environment. Topics include: Global Change, Daisyworld: An Introduction to Systems, Global Energy Balance: Greenhouse Effect, Atmospheric Circulation System, Circulation of the Oceans, Circulation of the Solid Earth: Plate Tectonics, Recycling of the Elements, Focus on the Biota, Origin of Earth and of Life, Effects of Life on the Atmosphere: The Rise of Oxygen and Ozone, Long-term Climate Regulation, Pleistocence Glaciations, and Global Warming: Recent and Future Climate, Impacts, Adaptation, and Mitigation

This course considers how geological agents have shaped the pattern of human evolution, the development of agricultural and early industrial civilizations, and impact on the general health of these and today's societies. The lectures are supplemented by a comprehensive on-line learning resource. The first part investigates how environmental conditions (e.g. fluctuating climatic conditions, natural resource availability, geohazards, and catastrophic natural events) influenced the evolution, migration, and settlement patterns of hominid and early-modern human populations in the recent geological past. The second part of the course examines how, over the past ten thousand years, geology has influenced the development of agriculture, cities, and an increasingly sophisticated use of metals, water, and other earth resources up to the Industrial Revolution. The increasing effect of humans on the environment over time is explored, including examples of civilizations ended by their own environmental impact; the collapse of civilizations as the result of external geological forces is also considered. The third part of the course focuses on how geological and related environmental factors continue to exert strong effects on the health and wellbeing of billions of people in the 21st century. Medical geology, an emerging discipline in environmental and human health, is introduced. Case studies are used to illustrate the beneficial and harmful effects of metals, metalloids, and mineral dust on human health and their links with geological environments.

Urban geoscience encompasses the geological aspects of the built environment in the context of construction materials and the underlying bedrock that affects the stability of built structures. In London, the relevance of these aspects are evident. This course introduces students to critical aspects of urban geoscience related to suitability of building materials and construction sites, underground water resource, its contamination and fluctuation and, scope of urban mining using London as an example. The concepts learnt must then be applied to any other expanding city in the world in the same contexts of construction and water resources, maximizing resource recovery, and recycling from urban wastes.

This course is directed at understanding specific air quality issues in 3 themes: 1) at the global 2) regional and 3) local (urban) scale. At each scale, the focus is understanding the life cycle of natural and anthropogenic air pollutants, i.e., the processes behind emission, transport in the atmosphere, chemical conversions, and deposition on the land/ocean surface. The role of meteorology on air pollution mixing and transport is explicitly explained on each scale. The course pays attention to the effects on human and environmental health, as well as the feasibility of alternatives and the efficiency of regulation and policy. On the global scale, the focus is on tropospheric chemistry, the greenhouse effect, and stratospheric ozone. On the regional scale, the focus is on the deposition of air pollutants (clouds, precipitation, wet deposition, dry deposition), acidification, and eutrophication, with ample examples by means of the nitrogen cycle. At the local scale, the focus is on traffic and industrial emissions, the role of vegetation, and photochemical smog. Each theme is completed with a tutorial, in which problem-solving is practiced as exam training.

This course examines the technological challenges, economic realities, and ethical and legal considerations we will face as a space-faring civilization in the future. It will address who owns property or natural resources in space; who will be responsible for responsible practices off planet; how will humans survive and thrive in the harsh conditions of outer space; are we destined for a bionic future; can we terraform planets to make them habitable; can we find answers to our origins in the ether beyond Earth; and careers in space-related businesses such as Space Lawyer, Space-Medicine, or Space-Entrepreneur.