The course will introduce junior/senior undergraduate students to the basic physical concepts of remote sensing as they relate to different earth surface processes. It will introduce students to a variety of recently developed ground, airborne, and satellite instruments and their applications to monitor and analyze environmental processes. These include active (e.g., Lidar), and passive (radiometers) sensors, optical (e.g., Landsat, MODIS), microwave (e.g., SMAP), and gravitational (e.g., GRACE) satellites.

The course will introduce junior/senior undergraduate students to the basic physical concepts of remote sensing as they relate to different earth surface processes. It will introduce students to a variety of recently developed ground, airborne, and satellite instruments and their applications to monitor and analyze environmental processes. These include active (e.g., Lidar), and passive (radiometers) sensors, optical (e.g., Landsat, MODIS), microwave (e.g., SMAP), and gravitational (e.g., GRACE) satellites.

Many of the greatest challenges we face today come from understanding and interacting with the natural world: from global climate change to the sudden collapse of fisheries and forests, from the spread of disease and invasive species to the unknown wealth of medical, cultural, and technological value we derive from nature. Advances in satellites and micro-sensors, computation, informatics and the Internet have made available unprecedented amounts of data about the natural world, and with it, new challenges of sifting, processing and synthesizing large and diverse sources of information.

Many of the greatest challenges we face today come from understanding and interacting with the natural world: from global climate change to the sudden collapse of fisheries and forests, from the spread of disease and invasive species to the unknown wealth of medical, cultural, and technological value we derive from nature. Advances in satellites and micro-sensors, computation, informatics and the Internet have made available unprecedented amounts of data about the natural world, and with it, new challenges of sifting, processing and synthesizing large and diverse sources of information.

Seminar in which students consider how modern biotechnological approaches, including recombinant DNA methods, can be used to recognize and solve problems in the area of conservation, habitat and endangered species preservation, agriculture and environmental pollution. Students will also develop and present case studies of environmental problems solving using modern molecular methods.

(1) survey of museum resources, including strategies for accession, conservation, collecting and acquiring material, administration, and policies; (2) strategies for making collections digitally available (digitization, databasing, georeferencing, mapping); (3) tools and approaches for examining historical specimens (genomics, isotopes, ecology, morphology, etc); and (4) data integration and inference. The final third of the course will involve individual projects within a given museum.

In this class, students study the natural history and evolutionary biology of island terrestrial and freshwater organisms and their communities, and of marine organisms in the coral reef and lagoon systems. The students also learn about the geomorphology of volcanic islands, coral reefs, and reef islands. Features of island biogeography are illustrated with topics linked to subsequent field studies on the island of Mo’orea, French Polynesia.