Geography & Environment

• CAS GE 375: Introduction to Quantitative Environmental Modeling
  Introduces students to quantitative models of environmental systems. Emphasizes application of quantitative models to environmental problem solving. Includes computer exercises with examples from current environmental issues such as population growth, pollution transport, and biodiversity.
• CAS GE 381: Geography of Asia
  Geographic survey of the Asian Pacific Rim and South and Southeast Asian economies. Emphasis on their environmental bases, historical and cultural traditions, and economic and developmental characteristics. Current themes in population, resource adequacy, levels of development, and problems of regional organization are explored.
• CAS GE 382: Understanding the Middle East
  Introduces the contemporary Middle East, including the Arab world, Iran, Israel, and Turkey; examines the systems of government; the roles of external powers; the origins of the state system; the sources and objectives of opposition forces; the prospects for political reform including democratization; and the prospects for future cooperation or conflict. Also offered as CAS IR 382.
• CAS GE 394: Environmental History of Africa
  Focus on the African environment and ecological systems over the past 150 years. Topics include climatic change, hydrography, agriculture, deforestation, soil erosion, disease, conservation, famine, and the role of colonialism and government policy in environmental change. Also offered as CAS HI 394.
• CAS GE 401: Senior Independent Work
  Senior Independent Work
• CAS GE 402: Senior Independent Work
  Senior Independent Work
• CAS GE 420: Methods of Environmental Policy Analysis
  Introduction to the analysis of environmental policy, the implications of environmental problems for public decision making, the tools available to decision-makers, and their effectiveness, advantages, and disadvantages.
• CAS GE 425: United States Environmental Policy
  Survey and historical overview of key environmental policies and regulations in the United States. Emphasis on policy development, including formulation and implementation of federal pollution control regulations since the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970. Considers possible future policy needs.
• CAS GE 440: Digital Image Processing – Remote Sensing
  Pursues both the algorithms involved in processing remotely sensed images and their application. Topics include spectral and spatial enhancement, image classification and clustering, spatial analysis, and linear transforms.
• CAS GE 445: Physical Models in Remote Sensing
  Devoted to understanding the physical processes involved in remote sensing. Emphasis on topics of radiative transfer in the atmosphere, at the surface, and in sensors. Reflectance modeling, advanced sensor systems, and geometric effects.
• CAS GE 448: Remote Sensing of Vegetation
  Examines the use of remote sensing to study vegetation. Topics include resource inventory and evaluation for forests and agriculture; ecosystem processes like primary productivity and biogeochemical cycles; and spectral reflectance measurement and models.
• CAS GE 450: Environmental Field Methods and Research
  Fundamental concepts and paradigms related to the application of scientific methods in the field. Developing and implementing independent environmental field research projects. Emphasis on the multidisciplinary nature of environmental research.
• CAS GE 456: Terrestrial Ecosystems and the Carbon Cycle
  Explores the past, present, and possible future dynamics of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Key topics include the physical climate system, variability, ecosystem processes, land use issues, and impacts of global change on society.
• CAS GE 460: Resource Economics and Policy
  Economic analysis of environmental resources and policies for their management. Introduces dynamic optimization as a tool for understanding and anlayzing both resource scarcity and the management of energy, fishery, and forestry resources for sustainability.
• CAS GE 483: Geodynamics II: Fluids and Fluid Transport
  Large- and small-scale phenomena in oceanic, atmospheric, and landsurface fluids. Properties of gases and liquids; surface and body forces; statics; flow analysis; continuity and momentum conservation. Darcy's Law; potential, open channel, and geostrophic flow; dimensional analysis; diffusion, turbulence.
• CAS GE 491: Directed Study
  Directed Study
• CAS GE 492: Directed Study
  Directed Study.
• CAS GE 501: Advanced Topics in Remote Sensing
  Examines advanced concepts in radiative transfer and information extraction relevant to remote sensing. Emphasis on applications of digital image processing to remote sensing problems.
• CAS GE 502: Field Measurements for Remote Sensing
  Field measurements to support remote sensing activities. Theory and measurement of upwelling and downwelling flux fields with field radiometers and spectrometers; forest canopy leaf area using specialized instruments; hemispherical canopy photography; GPS field location and surveying techniques; simple forest mensuration.
• CAS GE 503: Micrometeorology: Energy and Mass Transfer at the Earth's Surface
  Modern theories and techniques for measurement and analysis of physical processes occuring at the Earth's surface: radiation regimes; energy and mass exchange; agricultural and forest micrometeorology: remote sensing and modeling of land surface properties and processes.

Note that this information may change at any time.

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