2023-2024 Academic Catalog

Mar 03, 2026

2023-2024 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

GEOG 180 - Life in the Anthropocene: Environment and Society in an Era of Rapid Global Change

While humans have been changing their environment for millennia, we are currently in an era of unprecedented widespread and rapid transformation of virtually every geographic region of our planet, and of every aspect of the earth system, including its land, oceans and atmospheric processes. This course examines the nature, forces, impacts and implications of the Anthropocene, our current geologic and historic epoch of human-driven global environmental change, and explores the prospects and solutions for sustainability. We address the emergence of the Anthropocene and its foundational scientific concepts. We examine the range of pervasive, human-induced changes to the earth’s land systems, hydrosphere, atmosphere and the biosphere, and dive into the deeper underlying causes of these transformations. Finally, we consider geographic approaches, methods and theories probing our very relationship to nature, and untangle critical concepts linked to sustainability science, including concerns of diversity, equity, complexity, variability, vulnerability and resilience.

Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically