Environmental Studies

This course examines natural resource problems related to energy use, renewable and non-renewable resources, and agriculture and food; integration of ecological, economic, and institutional dimensions; application to management and policy issues at regional, national and global levels.

Building on the introduction and broad overview of Sustainable Development (SD) provided in SD1000, this course utilizes the UN's Sustainable Development Goals as a framework and is organized around five thematic clusters. These themes are explored from various disciplinary perspectives, explaining how each theme can be understood and what it entails in practice; who the key stakeholders are and the nature of their involvement; and how we can critically analyze the evidence in the context of SD and go beyond conventional paradigms and behavioral patterns. The course also highlights recurring, cross-cutting themes such as values, partnership, and diversity as ambitions of SD.

The course introduces students to major issues in modern glaciology, and to provides them with an understanding of how glaciers behave and why. The first part of the course explores the fundamental elements of glacier systems (accumulation, ablation, meltwater, ice flow processes, etc.), and explains how these interact to produce specific glacier behaviors (advance and retreat cycles, surges, etc). The second part of the course develops an understanding of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets and Mountain Glaciers, and how they impact other parts of the Earth system, including the oceans. The course develops a holistic understanding of glacier science, emphasizing the links between physical processes at a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.

Life history traits, e.g., growth rates, maturation schedules, and offspring size and number, are influenced by environmental and anthropogenic factors and in turn determine individual fitness and influence population growth rates. Because life history traits are heritable, variation in these traits tends to involve both evolutionary (genetic) and ecological (plastic) processes. Exploring life history variation provides an opportunity not only to understand the eco-evolutionary interactions that shape the observed patterns, but also to forecast population dynamics in changing environments. In this course, we design lectures to guide students to understand the concepts and theories of adaptive life history variation. In addition, the course project involves field sampling and laboratory experiments with mosquitofish Gambusia affinis, to gain hands-on experience on life history research. The objectives of this course are to understand the theoretical background of life history variation, and explore empirical variation in growth rates, maturation schedules, and offspring size and number based on the model species, mosquitofish.

This course considers the socio-political stakes of global environmental change under ongoing conditions of crisis and emergency. It pays special attention to the ways in which environmental change has always been a driver of violent conflict abroad, as well as a key terrain of racial management and pacification at home. Through a combination of detailed case study work and close readings of academic and non-academic texts, students get a clearer sense of how environmental change and conflict is intimately bound up in questions of racial capitalism, settler colonialism, militarism, and imperialism. Drawing inspiration from the work of activists, communities, and collectives across the Pacific – including the Mauna Kea Kiai and Indigenous water protectors across Turtle Island – the course emphasizes how the politics of environmental justice is always the politics of racial, gender, class, and social justice.

The majority of the world's population live in close proximity to the coastal zone. Coastal processes are highly dynamic and sensitive to external drivers, including long-term climate change and anthropogenic activities. Understanding these systems is important for developing appropriate coastal management strategies. Coasts (and coastal processes) therefore represent an excellent opportunity to study the interactions between humans and their physical environment. The course enhances students' understanding of environment-shaping processes and to offer advanced field-based training in the coastal environment. Including practical classes and an obligatory, reasonably priced, weekend field excursion, it encourages students to think about the ways in which process knowledge can inform coastal management.

After completing this course students are able to:
 

• judge different energy scenarios and their potential to contribute to a sustainable future.
• work with numbers, units, and diagrams to come to arguments for and against different energy systems.
• gain a basic understanding of the role of the natural sciences in society while focussing on the numerous applications in energy technology, climatology and sustainability.
• think critically about the positive and negative influences of chemistry and physics on society.

Content

After completing this course students are able to:
 

• judge different energy scenarios and their potential to contribute to a sustainable future.
• work with numbers, units, and diagrams to come to arguments for and against different energy systems.
• gain a basic understanding of the role of the natural sciences in society while focussing on the numerous applications in energy technology, climatology and sustainability.
• think critically about the positive and negative influences of chemistry and physics on society.

Content

This course provides a study of the origins, development, and main characteristics of environmental law, its ability to effectively protect the environment taking into account the real degree of enforcement. Topics include: development and nature of environmental law; international protection of the environment; the European Law and environmental law; constitutional and statutory configuration of environmental law; means of protection; instruments and techniques; environmental protection sectors.

Ecophysiology is the study of physiological adaptations of organisms in relation to the environments in which they live. It has become an increasingly important science, because an understanding of the relationship between organism and environment is essential in order to predict the effects of man-made environmental change. The physiology of an organism incorporates many of its most important adaptations to the environment in which it lives. This course considers the variety of environmental pressures imposed on organismal physiology. It examines the often ingenious solutions that evolve in response to these pressures, and how different organisms and groups of organisms have evolved different physiological means of dealing with the same problem. The course focuses both on the abiotic environment (e.g. issues related to climate, gas exchange) and the biotic environment (e.g. how digestive physiology is adapted to plant toxins). Towards the end of the course, students look at Conservation Physiology, one of the practical applications of ecophysiology. There is a particular focus on the physiological adaptations of animals. Although BIO2004 General Zoology is not a prerequisite for this course, the course is recommended before taking Ecophysiology.