Courses

Earth’s physical environment, its atmosphere, landscapes, water resources, and geology change from place to place. With this comes environment affects on people’s everyday lives. Yet people also influence their surrounding environments. Dry, wet, warm or cold regions present different challenges for the human population.

How do the earth’s physical landscapes develop and evolve? Why does New Jersey’s climate vary from season to season and year to year, and why is it changing? How does this differ from deserts in the southwestern US, the Florida Everglades, and the Alaskan tundra? Why does the landscape change from the Rocky Mountains to the New Jersey barrier islands? How do water, ice and wind sculpt these landscapes? Where do humans fit into these “equations”?

This course uses a systems approach to delve into linkage amongst these aspects of the physical environment, in particular exploring their geographic dimensions.

The course is designed to advance students’ GIS skill and enrich their experience in GIS applications. It provides a solid ground for students to start their GIS career. When students finish this class, they are expected to understand GIS approach in decision-making process, be familiar with advanced GIS techniques, GIS analysis and manipulation, problem-solving using GIS, and customization of GIS projects.

Water is one of the most basic resources for human societies. Although the earth has plenty of water, it is not always found at the place where it is needed and the time when it is needed. In this course we will explore the occurrence and movement of water in the earth’s land surface. We will discuss the hydrological cycle and processes such as precipitation and stream flow, evapotranspiration, snow melt, groundwater flow and current topics related to hydrology and water resources.

Syllabi

Water is one of the most basic resources for human societies. Although the earth has plenty of water, it is not always found at the place where it is needed and the time when it is needed. In this course we will explore the occurrence and movement of water in the earth’s land surface. We will discuss the hydrological cycle and processes such as precipitation and stream flow, evapotranspiration, snow melt, groundwater flow and current topics related to hydrology and water resources.

In this course students will learn how to visualize, analyze, interpret data, and find data in online data repositories with emphasis on spatial data. The course will cover traditional and emerging visualization techniques, basic descriptive statistical methods, and a range of techniques for problem solving includeing hypothesis testing, correlation and regression analysis. These techniques will be applied to explore problems in geography through project work and in laboratory exercises using Microsoft Excel and web based analysis tools.