EES 031 - Earth Systems Lab

Lower Division

Concurrently
EES 030

Earth Systems is designed to introduce students to the field of physical geography: the study of spatial distributions of phenomena across landscape, processes that created and changed those distributions, and implications for those distributions on people. The Earth has a number of systems in which matter and energy are moved and transformed. These involve dynamic processes of the solid Earth, water in all of its forms, the structure and motion of the atmosphere, and how all of these influence life. Understanding the Earth requires understanding how the whole Earth functions as a system. We will begin by considering external influences on the Earth system. We will then investigate four components of the Earth system in detail: the atmosphere, the oceans, the solid Earth, and the biosphere. We will explore how each component interacts with the others and how these processes control Earth’s climate. We will finish with a synthesis of systems and cycles.