西蒙弗雷泽大学

Environmental issues facing society are complex and interdisciplinary in nature. The major in Global Environmental Systems will produce graduates knowledgeable of climate change, carbon cycles and other dimensions of global environmental change, and able to support environmental decision making with an understanding of the complexity of and interplay between socio-economic and biophysical systems at the global scale. Students will have a basic understanding of modeling, geospatial, and other analytical methods and tools, and the ability to communicate the information gained thereby. Building upon a core in the social and natural sciences, students will have a solid grounding in earth systems, the global scale, and quantitative analysis. They will have the abilities to support decision-making involving multiple systems, and to communicate scientific and technical information to a variety of audiences. The GES major is designed to provide a foundation for post-graduate education in a range of environmental disciplines that use and interpret models for understanding and prediction of global environmental change.

This major takes full advantage of the expertise existing across FENV units and include the core requirements, both lower division and upper division, characteristic of all BEnv majors. It requires an interdisciplinary core of courses from the social and natural sciences and foundational knowledge of quantitative and geospatial methods. Students seeking the GES major will be required to complete more advanced methodology courses as well as six upper-division courses in environmental systems, both social and biophysical, and a capstone course that brings these streams together.

Program Requirements

Students complete 120 units, as specified below. Additional upper division units will be required to total a minimum of 45 upper division units. Visit the program overview for a suggested course sequence.

Lower Division Requirements

Complete all of:

ENV 221 - Systems Thinking and the Environment (3)
GEOG 100 - Our World: Introducing Human Geography (3)
GEOG 111 - Earth Systems (3)
GEOG 214 - Weather and Climate (3)
GEOG 255 - Geographical Information Science I (3)
REM 100 - Global Change (3)

Choose 1 of:

GEOG 251 - Quantitative Geography (3)
STAT 201 - Statistics for the Life Sciences (3)
STAT 203 - Introduction to Statistics for the Social Sciences (3)
STAT 205 - Introduction to Statistics (3)
STAT 270 - Introduction to Probability and Statistics (3)

Choose 1 of:

ARCH 131 - Human Origins (3)
BISC 101 - General Biology (4)
BISC 102 - General Biology (4)
HSCI 100 - Human Biology (3)

Choose 1 of:

BISC 204 - Introduction to Ecology (3)
EVSC 100 - Introduction to Environmental Science (3)
GEOG 215 - Biogeography (3)

Choose 1 of:

ARCH 286 - Cultural Heritage Management (4)
ENV 222 - Environmental Controversy: An interdisciplinary study of environmental issues (3)
GEOG 221 - Economic Geography (3)
GEOG 241 - Social Geography (3)
GEOG 261 - Introduction to Urban Geography (3)

Upper Division Requirements

Biophysical Systems (choose 3)

ARCH 388 - Geoarchaeology (5)
GEOG 213 - Introduction to Geomorphology (3)
GEOG 311 - Hydrology (4)
GEOG 312 - Geography of Natural Hazards (4)
GEOG 313 - River Geomorphology (4)
GEOG 314 - The Climate System (4)
GEOG 315 - World Ecosystems (4)