Environment-Society Track

Environment, Society, and Sustainability Geography in Action

The Long March to Isiolo Town. A large herd of camels is herded into town in search of grazing opportunities in Isiolo Town, Kenya amidst a severe and persistent drought across the wider Horn of Africa. This photo represents the coping strategies used to sustain peri-urban livelihood strategies in an arid region of Northern Kenya. Photo: Sarah Posner.

Winter is Coming! A scene from a village in the summer monsoon months in Sikkim near the Indo-China border. Village women are returning home after gathering firewood in preparation for winter while the men are out collecting caterpillar fungus in the alpine meadows. This photo was captured while conducting preliminary research for my dissertation project titled, ‘Caterpillar Fungus and the Making of Borderland Lives in Sikkim, India.’ Photo: Tsering Lhamo.

Sunset in Drido, Tibetan Plateau. Sunset at a ranch of a household of pastoralists who are trying to stay on the land despite intense pressures to move away from herding. Photo: Emily Yeh.

Untitled. Construction of the Laos-China Railway over a village in northern Laos. Photo: Jessica DiCarlo.

Leishan, 2012. Sometimes fieldwork isn't that exciting

Uncooperative horse. Household in Drido, Qinghai, Tibetan Plateau. This horse they hoped to ride has other ideas. Photo: Emily Yeh.

Environment, Society, and Sustainability Geography Concentration

Population, political, urban, social, and cultural geography

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From its earliest development as an academic field, Geography has been concerned with the manifold relations between societies and their natural and built environments.�� Societies adapt and transform the environments they inhabit.�� They depend upon the use of resources and reduction of hazards for their survival and material well-being.�� They also assign meanings to the environment that vary over place and time, but that help define their identity and values within the world.��

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Geographers tend to study these phenomena under the broad headings of resource use, natural hazards, sustainable development, landscape studies, cultural ecology, and environmental conservation. The University of Colorado has special strength in land and water resource issues in the American West, Africa, Latin America, and Asia.�� Students concentrating on environment-society relations are advised to take the introductory courses in human and physical geography and then, depending upon their academic interests and aims, to concentrate on specific topics and regions in the environment-society area.��

Courses Related to this Concentration

Lower Division

: Colorado Geographies: Environment, Society and Change in the Centennial State
: Climate Change Geographies: Science, Impacts, and Action
: Sustainable Futures, Environment & Society
: Mapping Our World
: Advanced Introduction to Human Geography
: Healthy Places, Toxic Spaces: Geographies of Wellbeing, Risk, and Care

Methods

: Visualizing Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events
: Statistics and Geographic Data
: Advanced Quantitative Methods for Spatial Data
: Research Seminar
: Field Methods in Human Geography

Upper Division

: Climate Politics & Policy
: Mountain Geosystems
: Internship (case-by-case)
: Natural Hazards
: Conservation Practice and Resource Management
: Political Ecology
: Cities of the Global South
: International Development: Economics, Power, and Place
: Place, Power, and Contemporary Culture
: Environmentalism, Race, and Justice
: Climate Action Planning: Reducing CU ��ý��'s Emissions
: Water Issues in the American West
: Food & Power
: Political Ecology of Latin America
: Climate Change and Health

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Undergraduate Program

Grad Program