The course focuses on the natural history of different wetland types including climate, geology, and,hydrology factors that influence wetland development Associated soil, vegetation, and wildlife characteristics and key ecological processes will be covered as well. Lectures will be supplemented with weekend wetland types, ranging from tidal salt marshes to non-tidal marshes, swamps, and glacial bogs in order to provide field experience in wetland identification, characterization, and functional assessment. Outside speakers will discuss issues in wetland seed bank ecology, federal regulation, and mitigation. Students will present a short paper on the ecology of a wetland animal and a longer term paper on a selected wetland topic. Readings from the text, assorted journal papers, government technical documents, and book excerpts will provide a broad overview of the multifaceted field of wetland study.

This interdisciplinary course exposes students to the three dimensions of sustainable development -environmental, economic, and social- through an examination of three products -peyote, coca, and coffee- that are crucial in shaping modern identity in areas of Latin America. The course integrates this analysis of sustainable development in relation to cultural sustainability and cultural practices associated with peyote, coca, and coffee and their rich, traditional heritage and place in literature, film, and the arts. This is an upper level seminar open to majors and minors of Spanish and those who have completed Pre-requiste SPAN 1800 or SPAN 1900 or permission of the Undergraduate Chair.

This seminar explores how the humanities can contribute to discussions of sustainability. We begin by investigating the contested term itself, paying close attention to critics and activists who deplore the very idea that we should try to sustain our, in their eyes, dystopian present, one marked by environmental catastrophe as well as by an assault on the educational ideals long embodied in the humanities. We then turn to classic humanist texts on utopia, beginning with More's fictive island of 1517. The "origins of environmentalism" lie in such depictions of island edens (Richard Grove), and our course proceeds to analyze classic utopian tests from American, English, and German literatures. Readings extend to utopian visions from Europe and America of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as literary and visual texts that deal with contemporary nuclear and flood catastrophes. Authors include: Bill McKibben, Jill Kerr Conway, Christopher Newfield, Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Karl Marx, Henry David Thoreau, Robert Owens, William Morris, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ayn Rand, Christa Wolf, and others.

This interdisciplinary course exposes students to the three dimensions of sustainable development -environmental, economic, and social- through an examination of three products -peyote, coca, and coffee- that are crucial in shaping modern identity in areas of Latin America. The course integrates this analysis of sustainable development in relation to cultural sustainability and cultural practices associated with peyote, coca, and coffee and their rich, traditional heritage and place in literature, film, and the arts.

While working with an advisor students conduct research and write a thesis.

This course will evaluate the multiple factors that must function to ensure the sustainability of estuaries of national significance. Since the beginning of the environmental movement in the 1960s, we have attempted to protect and improve our watersheds and estuaries through a series of environmental laws, but we learned over the last three decades that regulatory-based "command & control" approaches may have achieved their limits of success, and we now need to think more holistically in order to achieve the Clean Water Act goal of "fishable and swimmable" waters. In this course we will explore the new collaborative strategies and partnerships, which are available, and how social, economic and cultural factors are equally important as regulation to achieve estuary restoration. The National Estuary Program (NEP) was established in 1987 by amendments to the Clean Water Act (Section 320) to identify, restore and protect estuaries along the coasts of the U.S. Unlike traditional regulatory approaches to environmental protection, the NEP targets a broad range of issues and engages local communities in the process. The program focuses not just on improving water quality in an estuary, but on maintaining the integrity of the whole system - its chemical, physical, and biological properties, as well as its economic, recreational, and aesthetic. This course will examine the twenty estuaries of national significance, including the Chesapeake and the Delaware Bays, in an effort to define the condition of estuaries in the US and what strategies can be utilized to attain water quality and habitat goals while achieving important socioeconomic needs of the estuary's diverse stakeholders. You will examine the history of estuary management, the factors that stress water quality and habitat, and what strategies are commonly used to reduce risks while safeguarding the environment and public health.

Industrial Ecology is the multidisciplinary study of industrial systems and economic activities and their links to natural systems. The word "industrial" represents how humans use natural resources in the production of goods and services. "Ecology" refers to the concept that our industrial systems need to operate within sustainable natural ecosystems. The application of industrial ecology requires a movement of industrial processes from open loop business processes, where resource and capital investments move through the system to create products and waste, to a closed loop system where wastes (aka by-products) become inputs for new processes. This approach will allow to move to a circular economy. The implementation of industrial ecology, which aligns business operations with the natural cycle, creates the opportunity for a circular economy and has the potential for significant benefit for industry as well as for the long term viability of the human population and the natural ecosystem. Prerequisite: Approval from the instructor if course prerequisites not met.

Over the course of six Sunday field trips, we will travel from the barrier islands along the Atlantic Ocean in southern New Jersey to the Pocono Mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania, visiting representative sites of the diverse landscapes in the region along the way. At each site we will study and consider interactions between geology, topography, hydrology, soils, vegetation, wildlife, and disturbance. Students will summarize field trip data in a weekly site report. Evening class meetings will provide the opportunity to review field trips and reports and preview upcoming trips. Six all-day Sunday field trips are required.

This course will provide an understanding of the Earth's climate system and how and why this has changed through time. The emphasis will be placed on spatial and temporal scales in the modern system while exploring the evidence for past change, possible mechanisms to explain these changes and the implications of these changes to past, present and future global climate. Students will learn to reconstruct the history and scales of climate change through the use of proxies; understand the mechanisms that act to drive climate change; show and understanding of the long-term natural climate variability on a global and regional scale; understand the importance of natural environmental change, against which to assess human impacts, recent climate change and issues of future environmental change.

The culmination of the Earth Science major. Students, while working with an advisor in their concentration, conduct research and write a thesis. Prerequisite: GEOL 400-level and declaration of the EASC major. The Earth Science major, as of the fall of 2008, requires 1 semester of GEOL 399 and two semesters of GEOL 498.