ESM 102 Environmental Science II: Human Impacts

An introduction to environmental issues with a focus on human impacts to environmental systems. Human activities have an enormous impact on the natural world. Many human actions directly emit pollution, like driving cars that emit pollutants into the air and industrial processes that directly release pollutants into the water. Other actions are less direct, and lead to pollution release and habitat reduction associated with the production or use of an item that is not easily observed. This course and lab covers direct and indirect impacts of human resource use covering the following topics: Human population, material use, energy use and embedded energy, water use and embedded water, transportation, urbanization.