GBL 2002 National Parks in Transition: Geology, Climate Change, and Environmental Justice

National Parks in Transition: Geology, Climate Change, and Environmental Justice builds on /gbl-1002'>GBL 1002 to deepen students’ understanding of the natural and sociocultural complexities of the U.S. National Park System. This winter term portion of the course is designed to further explore the natural and sociocultural history and current state of the U.S. National Parks.

Through field investigations, ranger programs, service learning, and structured reflection, students explore the geologic, climatic, and ecological processes that shape park landscapes while examining the human dimensions of land management. Course topics include Indigenous and Western relationships to land, climate justice, biodiversity loss, resource pressures, and the impacts of tourism on protected areas.

Students are encouraged to reflect on their own cultural perspectives, consider multiple ways of knowing, and engage thoughtfully with both scientific and experiential approaches to understanding nature. By the end of the course, students will be able to analyze park landscapes using Western and Indigenous frameworks; explain major environmental and justice issues affecting the parks; evaluate tensions in land-use philosophies; and reflect on their evolving relationship to the natural world.

Credits

4 sh

Prerequisite

GBL 1002

Offered

• Winter

1. Understand the socio-cultural dimensions of land use, and how connections to and relationships with the land changes over time
2. Explore and unpack tensions between Native American perspectives on nature and land, western land management principles, and modern tourism management/economic development goals.
3. Describe the long-term/large scale and short-term/local geologic, climatic, and geomorphic processes responsible for creating the parks’ terrain and topography over time, and how those are understood via indigenous and western scientific lenses.
4. Analyze the ongoing interrelationships among the solid earth, ecosystems, and human activities in the parks at a micro-, meso-, and macro-scale
5. Explain examples of how climate change, biodiversity loss, natural resource exploitation, and environmental justice issues play out in the context of the U.S. National Parks (individually and as a system for land management), and how parks are addressing those pressures
6. Describe career options and professional pathways in the U.S. NPS, and other ways for engaged citizens to participate in the park system
7. Articulate the physical, mental, and emotional health benefits of a deeper connection to the natural world, and explain how those benefits are framed by indigenous and western cultural lenses.