Learning Outcomes

Geography 201 focuses on scientific literacy with special regard to physical processes at the Earth surface. The study of landforms is one of the oldest of the natural sciences from which many classic scientific premises and methods were born. Students will learn:

• Scientific methods and terminology including hypothesis formulation and testing, experimental design, the method of multiple working hypotheses, and opposite concepts such as inductive vs. deductive reasoning and empirical vs. theoretical methods.
• How to quantify physical properties of materials and forms, including use of the metric system, use of dimensional analysis to set up and test computations, and error checking.
• The use of geospatial tools including reading and interpreting topographic maps, and the definitions and capabilities of remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
• Hands-on (in a laboratory or field setting) recognition, measurement, and description of Earth materials, soil properties, sediment grain-size analysis, and field features.
• Concepts of geologic time, including basic divisions of the geologic time scale, basic Earth history, stratigraphic principles, philosophies of catastrophism, uniformitarianism, and neocatastrophism, and how landforms are created and change over various time scales.
• The environmental history of Earth’s surface from the recent geologic past to present with an emphasis on Quaternary processes and changes (the Quaternary is the current geological period that began ~2 million years ago). Interactions between climate, humans, and environmental response during and after the Neolithic period of human culture.
• What records of rapid and ongoing landform change and landscape sensitivity imply about sustainability science, land and resources management, and concerns over global change.
• How to demonstrate their knowledge and skill by preparing a report that analyzes, describes, and interprets landforms using airborne and satellite imagery provided in a term project.