Our Changing Earth
The Earth is a constantly changing place. To humans, it may sometimes as though the world around us changes little: we see the same mountains, the same rivers, the same fields, and the same weather patterns day after day. But over time, we might begin to notice small changes around us: a lake slowly drying up and becoming a marsh, or a sub-division of new homes being built on what used to be a wheat field. Sometimes change happens rapidly over large areas: a landslide changing the face of a hillside or a forest fire turning your favorite recreation spot into a charred, black landscape.
This course is about understanding Our Changing Earth through the lens of physical geography. There are two types of change we will look at throughout the course: natural and anthropogenic. Natural changes occur even if humans are not present; they are the processes that have been going on for hundreds to billions of year. Anthropogenic changes are those brought about primarily by humans. It's hard to imagine humans being able to change something as big as the Earth, but over hundreds of years, we have fundamentally changed both how the surface looks and what processes are shaping the Earth each and every day. We've altered river flows by building giant dams, we've re-distributed species across the continents by carrying them with us in our ships and airplanes, and we've changed both local and global climates by incrementally expanding our farms and cities across vast areas of the globe.
To understand how the Earth changes over time and space, we need to be able to objectively measure and analyze this change; to do so, we use the Scientific Method.
This course is about understanding Our Changing Earth through the lens of physical geography. There are two types of change we will look at throughout the course: natural and anthropogenic. Natural changes occur even if humans are not present; they are the processes that have been going on for hundreds to billions of year. Anthropogenic changes are those brought about primarily by humans. It's hard to imagine humans being able to change something as big as the Earth, but over hundreds of years, we have fundamentally changed both how the surface looks and what processes are shaping the Earth each and every day. We've altered river flows by building giant dams, we've re-distributed species across the continents by carrying them with us in our ships and airplanes, and we've changed both local and global climates by incrementally expanding our farms and cities across vast areas of the globe.
To understand how the Earth changes over time and space, we need to be able to objectively measure and analyze this change; to do so, we use the Scientific Method.