GEOG3581

In this field-based course, students will be directly exploring principles of field scientific inquiry (circle of scientific logic) starting with exploring the landscape through field observations and converting those field observations into environmental geographic field research questions. What is it? What is significant about this location? Where is it located in relation to biophysical features? Why is it located here not in another location? How is this location related to other locations and its surrounding environments? Through these observations and research questions the process will guide students in building not only curiosity and better focused exploration and investigation of the landscape, but it will lead into the skill of building a hypothesis and answering a research question.
Students carry out a variety of field measurements, identification, and analysis of environmental/geographic information to demonstrate how to solve environmental problems and make reasoned decisions. This hands-on course, through the circle of scientific logic process, introduces and implements field research techniques used in environmental and geographical sciences. Emphasis is placed on both theoretical and practical application of fundamental field methods.
This course supports the integration of geospatial technologies for field research measurements. Geospatial technologies are a range of modern tools supporting geographic research, mapping, and analysis. Geospatial technologies are comprised of techniques such as Geographic Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS), and Global Positioning System (GPS). This outdoor course will provide fundamental information on geospatial technologies and other environmental measurement tools and introduce students to resources that geospatial/environmental scientists use to collect spatial data and non-spatial in the field. Students will be transferring field data to and from desktop systems and will develop skills integrating field data with GIS and RS applications. Students will learn different image-based sampling methods and conduct field validation of data.

Using what they have learned throughout the course, each student or group of students will design and carry out an independent field data driven research project and present the results along with a research presentation and paper in class at the end of the semester.

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