Soil Science / Environmental Sciences 101 Forum on the Environment (2 credits, every semester)
Forum on the Environment is a 2-credit seminar designed to explore current environmental issues. The course will address general concerns such as global change, sustainability, and environmental quality through examination of a wide range of issues and perspectives. Students will examine current issues rooted in environmental sciences by participating in lectures, discussions, group work, and a small group project. The course is designed as a sampling of a wide range of topics rather than attempting to be comprehensive in scope. We will encourage you to ask questions about the environment, seek sources of information to answer these questions, evaluate information sources to understand the quality of evidence provided, and explore how to implement what we have learned in our individual career paths and as a community.
Soil Science / Forest and Wildlife Ecology 451 Environmental Biogeochemistry (Every fall)
This course will explore long and short-term cycles of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and metals as well as water and energy cycles among oceans, the atmosphere, terrestrial vegetation, and soils. An emphasis will be placed on the linkage between terrestrial vegetation and soils across global biomes for managed and unmanaged ecosystems. Biogeochemical processes will be investigated through their biochemical constituents, conceptual models and exploration of isotopic and chemical data. This will provide students with a practical understanding of the interactions between components and fluxes of terrestrial ecosystems and how data is developed and employed.
