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Exploring Sustainable Earth Resources: A Geosciences Course

This course delves into the utilization and impact of earth resources, covering topics such as water, minerals, fossil fuels, alternative energy, waste disposal, pollution, climate change, and environmental law. Students learn about the Earth's composition, resource pressures, and develop informed opinions on controversial environmental issues. It fulfills natural science requirements and is designed for non-majors and non-scientists.

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Exploring Sustainable Earth Resources: A Geosciences Course

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  1. Sustainable Earth A TOPICAL COURSE IN THE GEOSCIENCES ANDREW M. GOODLIFFE

  2. What is “Sustainable Earth” • A 4 credit lecture and lab class (two 1:15 lectures, one 1:50 lab each week) • Explores earth resources, utilization, and impact • ~110 students, mostly non-majors (and non-scientists) • An elective for geology majors • Required for environmental science majors • Fulfils university natural science requirement • Many have taken or will take physical or historical geology • No prior geological knowledge assumed

  3. What does “Sustainable Earth” Cover?Foundation • Brief introduction to the earth and solar system • Planets, earth composition, earth history • Examination of population growth • The reason why are our resources under increasing pressure • Quick survey of rocks and minerals • Rocks and minerals as interpreted by a geophysicist (easily covered in 1-2 classes)

  4. What does “Sustainable Earth” Cover?Earth Resources • Water • Ground water storage, consequences of withdrawal, pollution, case studies (3 classes) • Soil • Weathering, classification, erosion (1 class) • Mineral and rock resources • Formation and exploitation of ore and rock resources, exploration methods, supply and demand • Fossil fuels • Formation, exploration and exploitation of oil, gas and coal, peak oil, hazards and environmental impact • Alternative Energy • Nuclear, solar, wind, water power, ethanol, hydrogen fuel cells, etc

  5. What does “Sustainable Earth” Cover?By-Products • Waste Disposal • Landfills, hazardous waste disposal, sewage treatment, recycling • Water Pollution • Surface and groundwater, organic and inorganic pollutants, thermal pollution • Air Pollution • Acid rain, carbon and sulfur gases, particulates, lead, ozone • Climate Change • Ice ages, global warming, El Niño, desertification • Environmental Law and Policy • Mineral rights, law of the sea, EPA, approach to geological hazards

  6. Why Offer “Sustainable Earth” • Provide non-majors with a natural science course that is highly applicable to their lives • Educate our students with respect to the limitations of non-renewable and renewable resources • Educate our students with respect to the consequence of resource utilization • Provide students with an environment in which they can form educated opinions on often controversial topic • Produce citizens that can make intelligent business/policy decisions • And, along the way, they learn an awful lot of geology!

  7. Does this work? • Short answer….. YES • This has been offered as an entirely new course for three semesters • Offered in addition to physical and historical geology, not instead of • An opportunity to design a class from the ground up around modern pedagogical methods and instructional technology • Students are very engaged in class – very active discussions are common • Students are familiar with many of the topics and often have strong opinions – they have an investment in the subject matter • Compromises – yes • Non-majors taking this class are not exposed to the full range of geological topics – this is OK • Some subject matter departs significantly from geological curricula – this is also OK

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