The University of British Columbia

Course Description

An introduction, in seminars and field trips, to the major global, regional, and local environmental issues facing human societies.

UBC Calendar

For a full listing of course offerings please see the UBC calendar description

Learning Goals

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

Basic scholarly skills:
·       Iteratively monitor and improve their own process of learning
·       Find relevant information regarding environmental science topics
·       Identify and evaluate the sources of environmental information, and their potential biases
·       Formulate and ask relevant questions
·       Synthesize environmental information from a variety of sources and viewpoints
·       Understand and differentiate among the range of media types (newspaper, radio, TV, position papers, research papers.)

Communication skills:
·       Communicate a coherent synthesis, both orally and in writing
·       Defend a position, on an environmental issue, that is not necessarily your own viewpoint

Group Work skills:
·       Effectively contribute to group projects as a group leader
·       Effectively contribute to group projects not as a group leader
·      Evaluate the work of other groups, from an external perspective
·      Evaluate the work of other individuals

Instructors

Fall: Tara Ivanochko and Mark Johnson
Spring:  Sara Harris and Kai Chan

Textbook

Textbook starting Fall term 2010:  Withgott et al., 2010. "Environment: The Science Behind the Stories" Canadian Edition.  Pearson Canada, ISBN-13: 978-0-321-31533-5, ISBN-10: 0-321-31533-2.  You may use either the print or electronic versions.  This textbook is used at other institutions in the lower mainland, so there are likely used copies already available. New copies are available at Discount Textbooks (not at the UBC Bookstore).

 

Course Content

All the documents related to this course are at our VISTA site. Go to http://www.elearning.ubc.ca to login to this course.

Also check out the Environmental Sciences home page. 

Lecture Topics

Our emphasis in this course is on developing and practicing skills to gather, evaluate, and sythesize relevant information about environmental science.  The content topics vary from year to year, and from term to term, and different students will likely emerge with different "knowledge" about environmental topics. The topics below may or may not be included in a particular term. 

1. Course Introduction, Learning Outcomes, Education and the Environment
2. Global Climate Change
3. Environmental Values
4. Potable Water Supply
5. Human Energy Use and Energy Sources
6. Local, Regional, and Global Air Pollution
7. Loss of Biodiversity
8. Human Exploitation of Renewable Resources
9. Waste management
10. Politics of the Environment

Labs

There are no labs associated with this course.