G329 FIELD EXPERIENCE IN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE
WE REGRET TO INFORM THAT THIS COURSE HAS BEEN CANCELLED FOR 2013. PLEASE LOOK FOR A NEW VERSION NEXT SUMMER.
TRAINING
The practical training provided will have a strong interdisciplinary science base and will include contributions from climatologists, ecologists, biologists, and geoscientists with a broad range of backgrounds. The techniques and methods employed will require students to apply basic principles from biology, chemistry, geology, mathematics, and physics to solve the problems they encounter.
Much of the training will occur within the instrumented Willow Creek Demonstration Watershed. This area will serve as an outdoor laboratory for multiple teaching modules. Students will benefit from the use of the same general field area for different themes (e.g. bedrock geology, soil characteristics, groundwater hydrology, vegetation community structure, etc.) so they can mentally and physically interrelate ecosystem components. The Demonstration Watershed has a number of sites with permanently installed monitoring equipment. The course includes caravan trips to pertinent localities including several Superfund sites.
The course is organized into two parts. The first part involves extensive teaching designed to provide background concepts and introductions to instrumentation and computer applications that will be used during the course. Field instruction takes place in small groups and in one-on-one situations. Individual exercises have specific, focused themes that reflect the various disciplines that are involved in environmental science (e.g., botany, aquatic chemistry, soils). During the latter portion of the course, students work on a single final project where they integrate the various types of investigations and approaches they have learned in the course. This project emphasizes independent work.
