This introductory lesson will build the foundation for students to progress through the remaining units by defining food security and discussing the major factors contributing to food insecurity today (climate change, population growth, economic downturns, and change in global food consumption/wealth). Tied intimately to global food security is the concept of malnutrition. In this unit, students will engage with the three subcategories of malnutrition, which will provide an important basis for understanding the variation of food security across the globe and will challenge often held assumptions that food security only comes in the form of extreme hunger. Finally, students will be introduced to the global food system and will use the case study of chocolate to describe its components. As a formative assessment, students will take a five question multiple-choice quiz on the concept of malnutrition and the major causes of global food insecurity.

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In this unit, students explore the role of ocean circulation in climate modification and bioproductivity. The activities require students to interpret the effect of horizontal and vertical seawater movement on heat distribution, carbon dioxide dissolution, and nutrient availability. Students will use their new knowledge to predict how those parameters may change as a result of major shifts in ocean circulation associated with global climate change.

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How are rising sea levels already influencing the developing nation of Bangladesh, and what are the anticipated consequences of additional sea level rise in the next century? This introduction to the Ice and Sea Level Changes module is designed to prompt student consideration of the economic, social, political, and health impacts of sea level change. They will revisit the impacts of sea level change on society in Unit 5 when they investigate implications for New York City and Southern California.

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Online-ready: This opening class discussion about climate change and societal impacts could be converted to an online discussion format.

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How have mass-wasting events affected communities, and what lessons have we learned from these natural disasters that might help us mitigate future hazards? In this unit, students answer these questions by being introduced to the landscape and societal characteristics that contributed to loss of property and life during the 1970 Nevado HuascarÃn (Peru) and 2010 San Fratello (Sicily, Italy) events.

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Online-ready: This opening class discussion about landslides and societal impacts could easily be converted to an online discussion format.

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In this three to four class unit, students will:

Assess the case for a global water crisis and its relevance in America.
Expand their understanding of sustainability as a contestable concept and movement.
Consider water resource-management objectives through the lens of sustainability.
Analyze region-specific examples of unsustainable use of water for agriculture.

This is largely achieved via student discussion and evaluation of texts and statistics provided to them. The text and statistics are derived from a variety of disciplines, mostly not from the geosciences. As such, the unit is very interdisciplinary, requiring students to synthesize disparate information and take a holistic perspective on water issues.

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In this activity, students model the impact of changes in land cover on stormwater runoff using the EPA's National Stormwater Calculator. Students mitigate increased stormwater runoff resulting from development with low impact development (LID) controls. Students assess the LID controls in terms of the ecosystem services that they are intended to replace and discuss alternative development designs to reduce the need for them.

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During Unit 2, students will learn about the causes of two past mass extinctions and discuss the controversies surrounding these causes and the evidence upon which the theories in the debates are based. Before class, students will be assigned to read one of a set of different articles about theories for the causes of the end-Cretaceous and the end-Permian mass extinction. During class, students will get in groups with others who read different articles to pool their knowledge about flood-basalt eruptions and catastrophic asteroid impacts. They will re-group to compare and contrast the two proposed causes of the end-Permian and end-Cretaceous mass extinctions and the mass extinctions themselves.

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This unit investigates the role of the atmosphere on incoming solar and outgoing terrestrial radiation and analyzes modern trends in greenhouse gas concentrations. Students first investigate radiation spectra to see how the atmosphere absorbs radiation in different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. This information is used to develop the idea of greenhouse warming. Students then use the atmospheric CO2 dataset from Mauna Loa to investigate changes in atmospheric CO2 through time, and the drivers behind these changes. Follow-up questions ask students to consider how their own daily activities contribute to atmospheric CO2, and how rising CO2 may trigger potential feedbacks in the Earth system.

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In this unit, students work in small groups to examine and analyze spatial data relevant to soils to identify patterns. They use their analyses to add detail to their Earth systems concept maps and describe how these data are relevant to interdisciplinary societal issues.

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Students gain an intuitive understanding of strain and deformation through a series of physical model activities using everyday materials such as bungee cords, rubber bands, fabric, index cards, silly putty, sand, and more. Can be run to fill an entire lab session exploring multiple materials or as a shorter exercise using just rubber bands and stretchy fabric. An addendum provides mathematical content (vectors, matrices, multidimensional strain) that can be used by instructors interested in building student quantitative skills.

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Not online recommended: Exercise uses variety of physical models that would be hard to duplicate at home. The first part of the "basic" version of the exercise (as opposed to "extended") does use rubber bands and could potentially be done remotely.

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Students will be provided with seawater pH and carbon dioxide concentration (pCO2) data spanning as far back as 1850. They will describe trends in pH, pCO2 and atmospheric CO2 concentration, outline why these parameters are related, and predict how changes in these parameters will affect marine biology. Each group of students will be given a different set of data from different regions and asked to compare with other groups to determine if seawater pH change is a global or regional phenomena. This unit will provide students with an understanding of the pH buffering system and an opportunity to interpret real climate data.

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This unit includes an opportunity for students to move from definitions into reading and creating a diagram of a complex system relevant to their course, and then to exploring the connections between the components in the system. An exercise is provided to help students identify complex systems and their component parts from the world around them. Students will draw and revise a systems diagram, including identifying measurable quantities in the system, and participate in a gallery walk. The unit ends with students constructing a system diagram from photographs they take, and reflecting on their process. Note that to carry out the activities described in this unit, groups of students will need large sheets of paper and markers, or whiteboard/chalkboard space, to create a diagram.

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How do geologic, hydrologic, biologic, and built-landscape features manifest themselves on maps? In this unit, students will use topographic maps, hillshade maps, and aerial imagery to learn to recognize a variety of landscape features and subsequently identify as many of these features as they can on a map of a new study area. They will also construct a topographic profile from their map data and use their profiles to understand the concepts of slope, aspect, and relief and how these landscape characteristics are important in hazard assessment and land-use planning.

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Online-adaptable: Part 1 (lecture) and Part 3 (individual or small-group exercise) are particularly straight forward to adapt to online. The landscape scavenger hunt exercise, Part 2, is typically done with printed maps but can be successfully adapted to online by having synchronous groups of students work together to annotate digital map files using: 1) PDF annotation tools in Adobe or 2) putting the map images into a Google Slides file and using the scribble tool. Google Earth files are also provided as an additional option.

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In this unit, students will keep a log of immediate, personal sensory experiences by pausing once each hour over a period of ten hours and recording the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile experiences they are sensing at that moment. The log (or journaling activity) will occur outside of class and will be shared in a subsequent class meeting.
In class, students will exchange their logs, respond and discuss, and then form larger groups which will discuss disparate ways of paying attention to sensory experiences. Students will develop a deeper understanding of their own perceptions and how those perceptions can be recorded and used to evaluate an environmental setting. This activity is qualitative; it requires students to create an informal, subjective journal of their sensory experiences once each hour for a ten-hour time period prior to class.
When students share their individual qualitative experiences in pairs and small groups, they will begin to see patterns emerge that will enable them to develop quantitative observations for future use. They will also begin to relate their sensory experiences to the social, biological, and geophysical aspects of their personal environment; students will begin to explore how these system components are interrelated and how exposure to them may impact human experience and well-being. After the group discussion, students will reflect on the interstices between qualitative and quantitative analysis by way of their sensory logs and mutual discussion.

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In a hands-on exploration, students will learn to describe and quantify the porosity and permeability of soil models representative of both agricultural and natural environments. Students will use this information to relate the effects of various agricultural methods on soil porosity and permeability in an exercise that requires modeling the role of a soil assessment expert. Instructors are provided with directions for collecting or assembling simple soil models.

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Armed with an overview of the complexity of issues associated with global food security, this unit begins by contextualizing food security as an example of a wicked problem. Wicked problems are problems that are unsolvable in the traditional sense, and have complex multiscalar causal factors that contribute to the creation of new issues as old ones are addressed. Both global food security and climate change are examples of wicked problems. This unit presents systems thinking as a way to identify complex problems and explore solutions. Using a flipped classroom model, students complete a self study tutorial that presents system concepts in the context of Earth system science. The slide stack includes two guided activities related to the carbon cycle and soils. A short reading, "Why Systems Thinking?" and a video clip is included in the tutorial. Authentic assessment of the homework activity is an Earth system diagram connected to one of the issues of global food security from Unit 1 that they will bring to class. After a short class discussion that introduces concepts of sustainability and ecosystem services as related to food production, students are broken into groups and are asked to create their own systems diagram of the global food system, using the organizational systems concepts they examined as homework and the introduction activities of Unit 1. After completing the diagrams, students examine a food system diagram example, and identify the components of the system using standardized systems language. Students can photograph their diagrams or make quick sketches so they have a working copy to include with their notes.

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Students will explore the different aspects of the carbon cycle on Earth. This includes the original source of all the carbon on our planet, the near ubiquity of carbon, the six principle reservoirs of carbon in the Earth system, and the movement (flux) of carbon between reservoirs. Students will approach the chemical history of carbon by personifying the "journey" of specific carbon atoms throughout geologic time.
The unit emphasizes the grand challenges of energy resources and climate change by grounding these issues in a solid understanding of carbon from a systems thinking perspective. The point here is for students to gain a more robust appreciation for the movement of carbon between atmosphere and geosphere, between hydrosphere and biosphere. The unit provides dynamic understanding of how perturbations to one sphere or changes in the amount of carbon in a given reservoir can have implications throughout the Earth system.

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In this unit, students are introduced to the concept of a natural cycle. They are first asked to identify the different components of the hydrologic cycle in Spanish. Students will be able to recognize the delicate balance between the individual elements of a large and complex system. Students will also be able to identify the interactions among parts of a natural system.

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Unit 2 opens a window into water accounting and reveals intensive water use that few people think about. How much water goes into common commodities? Have you considered how much water it takes to support our modern American lifestyle and agricultural trade? Water that is embedded in products and services is called virtual water. Looking at the world through the lens of virtual water provides a watery focus to thorny discussions about water such as: the pros and cons of globalization and long distance trade; self sufficiency vs. reliance on other nations; ecosystem impacts of exports; and the impacts of relatively cheap imports on indigenous farming. Unit 2 also introduces the concept of a water footprint. A water footprint represents a calculation of the volume of water needed for the production of goods and services consumed by an individual or country. In this unit students will calculate their individual footprints and analyze how the water footprints of countries vary dramatically in terms of gross volumes and their components. As a result of these activities, students will learn of vast disparities in water access and application. They will also be challenged to consider mechanisms or policies that could foster greater equity in water footprints.

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The basic concepts of geology will be considered to address the widely ranging textures and compositions of rocks and sediments formed in a wide range of environments. These variations in turn can affect soil formation and many related Critical Zone processes and architectures.
This unit requires substantial reading to cover basic concepts of geology: the rock cycle, plate tectonics, geologic time, erosion, weathering, and deposition, so that students have a firm grasp on how geology relates to and controls CZ processes. This background knowledge is accessed through a review of web sites and a scientific papers. An in-class activity uses the U.S. Geological Survey's National Geologic Map Database to identify resources for understanding and classifying the geology of a region.

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