Environmental Studies

This course introduces students to field biology including the basic techniques involved, sampling design, and basic data gathering and data management. Through local field study sessions, students experience and encounter tropical environs and habitats, namely coastal, mangrove, and primary and secondary forests. The course includes a 1-week field trip to the luscious tropical island, Pulau Tioman, off East coast of Peninsular Malaysia where students experience unique tropical ecosystems such as rainforest, freshwater stream, mangroves, and the coral reefs under the guidance of experienced field biologists.

This course analyzes coastal zone management. Lectures cover waves in the ocean and calculation of properties such as wavelength from the parameters of wave period and water depth; surf zone processes and coastal groundwater: wave setup, wave run up, rip currents, and long shore currents; how the processes of saltwater intrusion into agricultural areas are generated and managed; sea level rise, the Bruun rule, and coastal sediment budgets; constitutional and legislative frameworks looking at the State of the Marine Environment Report; and evolution of integrated coastal zone management in Australia. Case studies are used to examine specific issues in Australia. The Barrier Island case study looks at geomorphic and ecological characteristics and processes, land use and development history, and contrasting approaches to management. The Venice case study examines environmental history, coastal structures, catchment impacts and management, resource exploitation, coastal subsidence, storm surge, ecological and engineering solutions, and sustainability. Students also participate in field trips to the Gold Coast and the Port of Brisbane.

This course introduces students to research at the intersection of several disciplines, using methods derived from botany, anthropology, ecology, economy, ethno-medicine, and climate and conservation science. This course studies the core concepts of ethnobotany which is followed by advanced studies of people-plant relations, focusing upon the importance of wild and domesticated plants to local livelihoods and opportunities for sustainable use of tropical natural resources. The course highlights patterns in plant use and the role that local peoples’ knowledge, institutions, and cultural perspectives can play in plant resource use, management, and conservation. It is composed of alternating lectures, exercises, and discussions, including student presentations and lectures by external specialists. Students work in interdisciplinary groups to define a common research project and plan field work.

This course focuses on our environment(s), which function as public goods in providing benefits but can, as common pool goods, be affected by the positive or negative externalities resulting from private behavior. Although `‘the environment'' is often defined as nature (e.g., land, water, air), it is more broadly defined to include the shared spaces (e.g., markets, classrooms, websites, electromagnetic spectrum) that nobody owns but everyone gains from. The course explores the value of environments, discusses how actions produce positive and negative impacts on environments, evaluates the magnitude of those impacts, and discusses different theories for managing and methods of protecting environments in the traditions of Pigou, Coase, and Ostrom. A knowledge of microeconomics is useful but not essential to this class (basic concepts will be reviewed and taught). Among other ideas, the course discusses assessing the incentives for behaviors and distribution of costs and benefits from policies (e.g., polluter pays, discounting, and mis-matched political-economic jurisdictions) as well as how aggregated environmental impacts and policies alter the market landscape within and among countries (e.g., pollution havens, and intergenerational equity, and environmental Kuznets curve). Students apply these ideas to a course paper on the topic of their choice that uses a cost-benefit analysis of market and non-market values to explore the existing distribution of costs and benefits as well as policy proposals that might move the distribution (and overall impact) of those polices closer to sustainability.

This is an undergraduate-level course, suitable for students without any background in marine geology and geophysics. The course covers geological processes across scales, spanning plate tectonics, marine sediment types, formation and process, as well as paleoceanography. Some of the topics covered are across disciplines, such as sediment type (chemistry) and benthic bioturbation (biology), with emphasis on the link between different branches of oceanography.