Many of the environmental issues and problems that PitE graduates will confront in their careers will involve anthropogenic drivers of change in large-scale, interconnected systems in the environment. As the human population grows and increases its consumption of resources, many interconnected environmental systems are undergoing change. Examples of human-driven change include land cover change, extraction or re-direction of fresh water, decline of fisheries from overfishing and dam construction, and coastal eutrophication, to name a few. Environmental professionals will be needed who have the skills and tools to analyze how government policies, economic realities including the need for resource extraction and fertilizer use, and environmental management decisions will impact large-scale, interconnected environmental systems. Human activities, decisions, and resource demands will interact with ecosystem responses, vulnerabilities, and stabilities to shape the large-scale environmental dynamics of the future. Decision makers will need to understand concepts such as tipping points, lag times, and resilience in connected human-natural systems. Decision makers will also need to be able to analyze tradeoffs and potential synergies among social, economic, and ecological goals. Dynamic system models provide a framework to develop and communicate understanding of complex causes and effects in interconnected systems in the environment. In this course, students will learn to confront the complexity of large-scale and multifaceted environmental issues by building and using dynamic models. Students will learn to form concise statements of complex problems or concerns, and then learn to use models to gain intuitive understanding of dynamics such as lag times, overshoots, and the potential for multiple stable states and to apply models as decision support tools. The steps in conceiving, building, and applying an environmental model will be taught. These steps include identifying a problem statement, creating a conceptual model of system interconnections, building, testing, and exploring various model formulations, and simulating scenarios to inform management decisions or policy analysis.

Intended audience: Jr & Sr PitE majors & minors. This course is not geared toward students with strong mathematical or engineering interests, but designed primarily for those interested in policy, resource management, or impacts assessment.

Course Requirements: 2 closed-book exams (1 midterm 15% and 1 final 25%). Course will use individual case studies as the central methodology in teaching modeling concepts. With each case study, students will be required to draw on material in readings and lectures to: 1) briefly explain the environmental issue together with its social and ecological tradeoffs or synergies; 2) perform guided simulations of particular management or policy scenarios; 3) analyze the model results by comparing/contrasting scenarios; 4) provide original, critical insights into the strengths and limitations of the models in capturing the salient dynamics of the system; and 5) address the interconnected environmental issues.

Class Format: 3 hrs weekly in an instructional computer lab. 1 half-time GSI will help prepare in-class exercises, attend class and help during modeling exercises, do assigned readings, hold office hours to help w/ assignments, assist in grading case study writeups, preview and grade midterm & final exams.