Research & Teaching

This is an interdisciplinary graduate-level and advanced undergraduate-level course in which students explore topics in molecular microbiology, microbial diversity, and microbially-mediated geochemistry in depth. This course will be taught by faculty from the Microbial Sciences Initiative.

Within our solar system, Earth is distinguished as the planet with life. Life was born of planetary processes, has been sustained for some four billion years by planetary processes, and through time has emerged as a set of planetary processes that is important in its own right.

The Amazon rain forest of South America is the most diverse place on earth in terms of its rich and varied plant and animal life.

This course will examine the theory and practical application of environmental chemistry and toxicology for assessing the behavior, toxicity and human health risks of chemical contaminants in the environment.

This course examines how natural and anthropogenic changes in the earth system are affecting the composition and the functioning of the world's land and ocean ecosystems.

An introduction to the deformation of Earth materials, including the processes of mountain building and plate tectonics, faulting and earthquakes, folding, and ductile deformation.

Seminar course investigating recent advances in structural geology and exploration geophysics with applications in earthquake science and the energy industry. Specific topics vary each year offered.

Note: Likely to be offered in Fall 2020. 

The broad goal of this course is to introduce students to the foundations of key sectoral and thematic knowledge for important challenges to sustainable development including food and nutritional security, social service delivery, energy policy, water resource management, urbanization, infrastruc

This course is a geologic and environmental treatment of the materials used in everyday life.

This class challenges students to examine the city around them and connect its social and economic history with its shoreline, glacial hills, city parks, and segregated neighborhoods.

The world needs leaders with the skills, courage and perseverance to fight for environmental health and a sustainable future.

Our understanding of Earth has changed radically in the last two centuries: after many years of debate, many major questions have come to be seen as largely answered. It is now accepted that the planet formed over 4.5 billion years ago; that the Earth’s surface is made of rigid segments—called pl

Confronting the reality of environmental degradation requires more than remote sensing, statistical analysis or institutional restructuring. As images of the changing planet become emblematic of our time, designers are responding with a scrutiny towards amplified scales and extreme events.

Land and water conservation has become an important tool for both sustainable development and biodiversity conservation around the world. More than 15 percent of the world's terrestrial area and 10 percent of coastal waters are now encompassed within protected areas.

This section gives new History concentrators an introduction to environmental history. Most historians leave the natural world out of the story, but environmental historians regard nature as the inescapable context for human history, including the human impact on nature.

This seminar examines the world’s systems for the production and distribution of food as they relate to the earth’s physical, chemical, and biological systems.  Using scientific readings, papers about economics and politics, and cases about firms, we consider agriculture and food from scientific,

Selected topics in the history of the North American coastal zone, including the seashore as wilderness, as industrial site, as area of recreation, and as artistic subject; the shape of coastal landscape for conflicting uses over time; and the perception of the seashore as marginal zone in litera

This course will explore the intersection between religious traditions and ecological activism, with special attention to current conversations about "ethical eating." We will consider both the resources that religious traditions provide to ecological activists and the ways these activists have c