MSCI-270C Environmental Science and Ecology
3 Credits
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MSCI-270C-01
Wednesday
5:00 pm â 7:50 pm
Activities Resource Center, E -11
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MSCI-270C-02
Like any other organism, humans rely on their environment-most prominently the living part of that environment-in order to survive. But unlike any other species, humans have the ability to re-shape the diverse environments they inhabit in profound, fundamental, and potentially destructive ways. This course explores how living ecosystems function and how that functioning provides the resources required by both individual humans and the societies we form. It also considers how we have transformed our environment I n ways that can threaten both our own health and the health of the ecosystems upon which human civilization depends. Many scientists suggest that we have entered a new geologic epoch, the Anthropocene; this course explores ways in which the ‘age of humanity’ can become a sustain able-rather that apocalyptic-episode in evolutionary history.