ESCI 100 - Earth Resource Challenges

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

(Same as ESSC 100, ENST 100, and GEOG 100) This course combines the insights of the natural and social sciences to address a topic of societal concern. Geographers bring spatial analysis of human environmental change, while earth scientists contribute their knowledge of the diverse natural processes shaping the earth’s surface. Together, these distinctive yet complementary fields contribute to comprehensive understandings of the physical limitations and potentials, uses and misuses of the earth’s natural resources. Each year the topic of the course changes to focus on selected resource problems facing societies and environments around the world. When this course is team-taught by faculty from earth science and geography, it serves as an introduction to both disciplines.

Topic for 2013/14a: Water and Cities. With the explosive urbanization of the modern world, new and unprecedented demands are placed on the earth’s hydrological systems. A variety of environmental issues-such as water provision and drought, depletion of aquifers, pollution of watersheds, flooding, regional climate change, privatization of supply and other policy questions-arise out of the insatiable demand for water by contemporary metropolitan regions. This course combines geographical and geological perspectives on the increasingly urgent problems of urban water. Consideration is given to case studies of water problems in the New York metropolitan region, cities and suburbs of the arid U.S. Southwest, and Latin American mega-cities such as Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro. Ms. Menking.

Two 75-minute periods.

Open only to freshmen; satisfies college requirement for a Freshman Writing Seminar.