General Education Program
Extended Course Description

Course Content: This course addresses the spatial dimensions of our planet's dynamic systems, including energy transfer, air, water, weather and climate, landforms, vegetation, and soils. Regional variations in these systems are explored, at scales from local to global. Understanding of the interrelationships between these earth systems--and of human interaction with them--is key to forming an integrated understanding of the physical landscape and its significance to humankind. The course addresses issues of the environment and of natural hazards, and includes a substantial laboratory component.

Methods of Learning: The student learns to recognize variation in the landscape of selected natural phenomena and to determine variables which affect their spatial distribution. Experiments may require formulation of a hypothesis, sampling, laboratory analyses, data representation, and interpretive evaluation of the results. An example would be taking soil samples in an organized survey, testing them for pH and structural composition, mapping their distribution, and relating spatial variation in soil qualities to differences in slope, vegetation, and land use. In this way the student reinforces deductive, qualitative understanding from the text and lectures with inductive, quantitative observations and the scientific method.

Course Requirements: Evaluation of student performance in this course includes a series of three unit exams over lectures, films and readings; a map interpretation test; laboratory reports and homework exercises; a comprehensive laboratory practical exam; a group project; and a class participation grade.

Benefit to the Student: Physical Geography affords a broad perspective for studying and interrelating natural phenomena, locally, regionally, and at the global scale. By using analysis of spatial distributions and relationships, it explains how and why peoples, physical environments, and natural resources vary from place to place. As an intellectual bridge between the social and natural sciences, as well as a vehicle for aesthetic appreciation of landscapes, physical geography provides an appropriate introduction to environmental science, and a meaningful foundation for a liberal arts education.

(Revised: May 1993)

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