GPS 0106 - Sustainable Planet

Credits: 4

Earth is the home of humanity, and our life-support system. As a spectacularly creative and adaptive species, we have always transformed our habitats and homelands to meet our needs. In the past century however, technological advances and new economies together with growth in human numbers have increased the scale and intensity of human impacts on Earth to the extent that there are now serious concerns about our collective future here. In this course we explore the Earth System, its subsystems, and the ecosystem services that support us. We explore the science of sustainability, which is the search for ways to equitably meet the human needs, desires, and aspirations of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. The course includes a lab component where students empirically investigate natural systems and experiment with the sustainable design of human systems and infrastructure.

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