GEOG/WATR 2004: Water, Environment, and Society

This course offers an introduction to the hydrologic cycle, water resources, and related environmental issues, with an emphasis on ethics and relationships between human needs for and effects upon water including: water quality, water treatment, and wastewater treatment; water for health, energy, and food; water management, laws, economics, and conflict; hydrometeorological hazards and climate change; and potential solutions for these and other critical water issues.

Why take it?

This course allows students to better understand and solve environmental problems both while at VT and later in their lives. They will develop the critical life skills of communication, ethical reasoning, and problem solving through group discussions and a final presentation, the investigation of water pricing, human water rights, environmental water rights, and their behavioral effects on water resources, and the development of a solution to a grand water problem, respectively.

GEOG/NR 2004 fulfills an elective or requirement in the following Pathways minors:

• Blue Planet  
• Climate and Society
• Ecosystems for Human Well-Being
• Integrated Security

Requirements

There are no prerequisites for this course.

This course fulfills Pathways requirements in Reasoning in the Social Sciences and Ethical Reasoning.