Earth and Environmental Sciences - Fall 2023 Sophomore

Course # EAES 2011

6 Credits

Course Description

This course introduces students to physical processes and ways of thinking quantitatively about the world around us, to understand every day and specific physical phenomena related to Earth and Environmental Sciences. The course includes introductions to mechanics and gravity (how objects move, potential field gravity field, principles of Newtonian mechanics, stress and strain), fluids and material properties (how solids, liquids and gases behave, buoyancy forces, gases rules, model of ideal gases, thermal physics (how heat moves, latent constant, thermodynamics laws), and waves (e.g., light and sound). Throughout the course, we’ll develop skills of asking physics questions and making scientific estimates. 

Course Learning Outcomes

At the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Recognize fundamental concepts throughout physics (e.g., conservation of energy). 
• Recognize that EES phenomena as combination of multiple physical processes
• Interpret physical concepts quantitatively
• Derive the most important physics concepts and equations for EES

Course Assessments and Grading

Course # EAES 3001

6 Credits

Course Description

This course provides a theoretical and practical introduction to the fundamental principles of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing digital image processing. It is focused on the essential skills of operating a functional GIS with ArcGIS software package, which is one of the most widely used desktop GIS applications in the world. This course analyses generic programming language concepts and techniques and demonstrates their implementation using Python in GIS. The fundamental principles and methods of introductory and intermediate geographic information science are explored as students practice ways to think spatially and develop ways to work with and apply new GIS knowledge to real world problems.

Course learning outcomes

After taking this course, students will be able to:

• Explain the main concepts that define Geographic Information Systems
• Explain how and why geographic data are entered, stored, and manipulated using GIS, and how to acquire, process, and analyze remotely sensed data.
• Conduct basic spatial analyses including clip analysis, slope analysis, and IDW tools.
• Explain how to properly use geospatial analysis for a wide range of applications, such as ESRI's ArcGIS software.
• Analyze spatial data, using GIS analysis tools such as Network and Buffer Analysis
• Apply Python programming language as a GIS computer language and using the special ‘arcpy’ package.
• Apply modern GIS and Remote Sensing Technologies like Raster Calculation, Map Algebra, Raster Vector Conversions, Surface Analysis, reclassified a slope raster etc.

Course Assessment and Grading

Course # EAES 2046

6 Credits

Course Description

Geomorphology is the study of Earth’s surface. As such, it is a crucial component of solutions to a wide range of environmental problems and engineering designs. It has even become an important tool for understanding how far-off planets like Mars and Venus have evolved to their current state. This course is about earth’s landscape, its present form, and the processes responsible for its large-scale organization. The goal is to provide students with an appreciation of how the landscape around them formed and its continued evolution with particular focus on landscapes of mountain environments of Central Asia.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of the course, the student should be able to:

• Explain principal terms, definitions and theories of geomorphology.
• Describe landforms and land forming processes in different climate zones and tectonic regimes.
• Explain different theories and models for landscape evolution.
• Discuss the development of micro to mega scale landforms and their lifespans
• Assess the mode of formation, age and history for landforms in mountain environments of Central Asia
• Compare the formation of large-scale landforms involving both exogenous and endogenous processes

Course Assignments and Grading

Course # EAES 2030

6 Credits

Course Description

This course provides hands-on training to use geospatial and environmental facts to produce useful suggestions for improving decisions about location, atmosphere, and climate, from the most natural to the most urban. Students learn how to use geographic information systems and remote sensing to solve challenging issues related to maintaining ecosystems and promoting sustainable practices and to recognize complex environmental issues such as natural resource mismanagement and atmospheric and climate change. Students analyze a wide range of information, including real-time data, mapping, monitoring, management, and live forecast. This course demonstrates how to use remote sensing and geospatial information for many planned and daily decisions across a wide range of sectors, and especially in atmospheric and climate science.

Course Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course, the students will be able to:

• Use geoscience techniques and current environmental information to define issues and solutions in atmospheric and climate science.
• Use numerical models and their role in atmospheric and climate science based on current observations to solve earth and environmental problems.
• Analyze, interpret, process and use climate data to visualize various atmospheric and climate phenomena.
• Acquire satellite images, perform parameter retrieval, use GIS data for atmospheric forecast and climatology applications.
• Manage the design, documentation, and resourcing of RS/GIS science solutions in a variety of settings, including workplaces and contested environmental issues.
• Analyze the atmospheric and climate change impacts, preparedness, response, related policies, law and future plans.

Course Assessments and Grading

Course # HUSS 2101E

3 Credits

Course Description

This course is an introduction to ethics. It aims at providing students with the basic knowledge of ethical theories, categories, and topics. We shall explore major ethical discussions in the contemporary world ranging from individual autonomy to environment and concerns about AI development. We will look at ethical issues from different perspectives – religious and secular, individual and communal, human and non(trans)-human points of view. The course does not presume to dictate any norms, its purpose is to help students develop skills of reasoning and decision making required of responsible and effective global citizens who are able to create innovative solutions to the problems of the 21st century.

Course Learning Outcomes

Upon the completion of the course, students will be able to:

• Use ethical categories accurately,
• Discuss ethical issues responsibly (amicably and cooperatively),
• Untangle (latent) premises upon which (their own or others’) ethical statements are made,
• Defend an ethical stance in a debate reasonably (using arguments, relevant facts, knowledge of ethical theories).

Course Assignments and Grading

Course # DMNS 2012

3 Credits

Course Description

Linear Algebra is a foundational course at UCA. It can be applied in business, economics, sociology, ecology, demography, engineering and other areas.

In this course, students will study mathematics that deals with the system of linear equations and their applications, operations with matrices, applications of Markov chains, applications of determinants, eigenvalues and eigenvectors and their applications.

Course Learning Outcomes

Upon the completion of the course, students will be able to:

• Set up and solve a system of equations to fit a polynomial function to a set of data points.
• Use matrices and Gaussian and Gauss – Jordan eliminations to solve a system of linear equations.
• Do operations with matrices.
• Find the inverse of a matrix.
• Use a stochastic matrix to find the nth state matrix of a Markov chain.
• Find steady state matrices of absorbing Markov chain.
• Use matrix algebra to analyze an economic system (Leontief input- output model).
• Find the least square regressions line for a set of data.
• Use Cramer’s rules to solve a system of n linear equations in n variables.
• Model population growth using an age transition matrix and an age distribution vector.

Course Assignments and Grading

Course # MDIA 2113E

3 Credits

Course Description

Creative Writing involves the development of intellectual, imaginative and skills of embodied self-expression. It also involves reading. In this craft-based course, students engage in a series of lectures and workshops, learning a range of creative writing skills in a variety of genres, methods and approaches and, in turn, are encouraged to be experimental and adventurous in their writing. Seminars address different creative writing topics and readings so that students can learn about various approaches from poetry to film dialogue-writing. The workshops are interactive; they aim to increase understanding of the process of creative writing and, most importantly, the process of script development, editing and presentation. All creative work in its original form can be written in a language of the student’s choosing but must be translated into English for assignment submission.

Course Learning Outcomes

Upon the completion of the course, students will be able to:

• Identify and write in a range of genres including original fiction, non-fiction and poetry using literary techniques.
• Identify and demonstrate - in literature and in their own work - classic language forms and features, and elements of plot development, characters, landscape and setting, and achieve creative writing and reading skills in relation to concepts, topics, craft, technique and voice.
• Describe and demonstrate the creative processes of revision and editing.

Course Assignments and Grading

Course # EAES 2130E

3 Credits

Course Description

This Elective Course explores the human and environmental interactions in Central Asia. The interaction of the people inhabiting the region with its environment has a long history. This course focuses on the major environmental issues that have both resulted from human interaction, from habitation in the region and have also altered the relationship between humans and the environment. It will also examine how the environment and settlement in various parts of Central Asia were affected by colonial, Soviet, and present political, economic, social, and demographic changes. Guided by the new approaches of Environmental Humanities the course stresses the multidisciplinary approaches to understanding human habitation and environment in the region. Throughout the course students will analyze primary and secondary sources: documentaries, photographs, policy papers, and fictional works, to have a better understanding of the issues affecting human relationships with the environment in Central Asia.

Course Learning Outcomes

Upon the completion of the course, students will be able to:

• Analyse how socio-economic and political changes in modern Central Asia had an impact on human interactions with environment. 
• Discuss the ways  human impacts on ecosystems in different parts of the region 
• Identify and critically analyse the environmental issues that affect settlement of population 
• Identify appropriate sources to analyse environmental changes, and interventions in the region 
• Discuss different approaches to understanding major environmental changes in Central Asia 

Course Assignments and Grading