• GEOG 3090: Health-Global Pandemics

  3.00 Credits

  University of Utah

  
  Graduate students should enroll in GEOG 5090 and will be held to higher standards and/or more work. The increasing population mobility and the worsening environment have led to many global health problems such as the recent outbreak of COVID-19. Understanding and preventing these public health problems require efforts from various disciplines, including Geography. Health geography incorporates concepts and methodologies from the discipline of geography to study population health, disease, and health care. This course will provide a broad introduction to health geography through its coverage of various topics including infectious diseases, health disparities, and healthcare accessibility. It will use COVID-19 and other globally transmitted diseases as examples to illustrate how geographical methods can facilitate the understanding of social-environmental causes and social injustice of health problems. It will review popular quantitative and qualitative methods that are routinely used in public health and epidemiological investigations and demonstrate how the geographer's toolbox of spatial analysis methods can effectively improve public health. This course applies three main approaches to health geographic research: social/behavioral approaches, ecological approaches which focus on relationships between people and their environment, and spatial epidemiological approaches which apply maps and spatial methods to identify and understand patterns of disease.
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• GEOG 3100: Intro to GIS

  4.00 Credits

  University of Utah

  
  This course introduces the major concepts and applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). GIS are systems for the management, analysis, and display of geographic information. In this course, you will learn about spatial information, digital data, and how GIS is used as a tool to represent features, examine relationships between features, and display information. Lectures cover principles and concepts, as well as applications of GIS. Labs are designed to apply the concepts with hands-on exercises while becoming familiar with and learning the functionality of ArcGIS Pro software. The objective of the class is to learn to solve problems using GIS and display the information in a way that facilitates communication and understanding. In addition to lectures and lab exercises, we will learn and practice skills through in-class exercises and the final project, with the goal of being able to apply skills to solve real problems. This class fulfills a quantitative intensive (QI) requirement, which means the course content will develop analytic reasoning skills and deepen knowledge of quantitative methods. You will build upon and expand previous knowledge of quantitative method concepts by learning about and practicing the underlying quantitative theory behind core GIS concepts. The goal is that you will understand not just the software but also the theory when applying quantitative methods to practical issues and real-world problems via spatial analysis. Prerequisites: 'C' or better in MATH 1050 OR 1060 OR 1080 OR 1090 OR 1210 OR 1220 OR 1250 OR 1260 OR 1310 OR 1311 OR 1320 OR 1321 OR AP CalcAB/CalcBC score 3+ OR ACT Math score 26+ OR SAT Math score 640+ OR IB Math score 5+
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• GEOG 3110: Intro to Remote Sensing

  3.00 Credits

  University of Utah

  
  Over the past decade there has been an extraordinary increase in the availability of remotely sensed images of Earth. Many people are now familiar with remotely sensed data through programs like Google Earth. The explosion in the availability of remote sensing data has coincided with a growing number of remote sensing applications. Remote sensing data are now used in anthropology, civil engineering, environmental sciences, geography, geology, hydrology, natural resource assessment, meteorology, and urban planning. This course adopts an interdisciplinary approach applicable to those fields, examining remote sensing theory, techniques, and applications. The course explores the physical basis for remote sensing and covers remote sensing technologies that use sunlight, infrared radiation, radar, and lasers. Five lab exercises give hands-on experience with real remote sensing data.
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• GEOG 3160: Intro Spatial Data Sci

  3.00 Credits

  University of Utah

  
  This course is designed to introduce students to the set of skills required to use and analyze spatial data, including data acquisition and storage, processing, analysis and the communication of results. Topics will include the use of simple databases, exploratory analysis and machine learning. Each topic will be introduced through a mix of video lectures and in-class demonstrations, followed by a hands-on lab where students can apply the techniques using Python or R. In addition, students will be required to carry out a short spatial data science project and present the results to the class.
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• GEOG 3170: Geospatial Fld Mthds

  3.00 Credits

  University of Utah

  
  Graduate students should enroll in GEOG 5170 and will be held to higher standards and/or more work. This field based course is a hands-on introduction to geospatial field methods. Course content will focus on Global Positioning Systems (GPS)/Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) and unmanned aerial systems (UAS; commonly referred to as drones), but will also broadly cover the various tools and resources geospatial scientists employ to gather, process/analyze, and visualize/present geospatial field data. Prior to the field session class room lectures will cover the basics needed to successfully understand field collection and analysis, including projections and coordinate systems, remote sensing, georeferencing, digital surface/elevation models, and basic spatial analysis using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In the field, students will learn safe field practices, field note taking and metadata collection, how to write up field reports, and will get guided hands on experience with geospatial data field instrumentation including surveying equipment, GPS, and UAS, and will independently collect data for their course projects.
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• GEOG 3180: Intro Geo-Programming

  3.00 Credits

  University of Utah

  
  Contemporary research in Analytical Geography has placed an increasing demand on the computational skills of its practitioners. The advances in spatial data analysis and geographical modeling have also largely out-paced the capabilities of standard statistical software. At the same time, the multidisciplinary nature of the spatial sciences often translates into the need to deal with disparate data sources, formats, and programming languages. As such, students undertaking research confront a challenging set of tasks seldom covered in an integrated fashion. This course addresses this need through: 1) general purpose programming in Python and 2) Python scripting in ArcGIS Pro.
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• GEOG 3200: Mtns, Rivers, Deserts

  4.00 Credits

  University of Utah

  
  Why does Utah look different than Kansas? How did the Grand Canyon form? This course explores Earth's surface systems to see how landforms are created and modified over time. These systems include mountain building, and erosion and deposition by rivers, glaciers, landslides, wind, and shoreline processes. Analysis of landforms and processes will be directed towards understanding how the surface of the Earth got to be the way it is, and how it is changing. Comparison of different landforms will be used to illustrate how different processes operate. For example, mountain valleys carved by glaciers are significantly different than those carved by rivers. This course offers explanations for differences such as this, and explores reasons for changes that take place in landforms. Field trips will provide an opportunity to see local examples of different processes and their resulting landforms. Prerequisites: 'C' or better in GEOG 1000 OR IB Geography-higher level score of 5+.
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• GEOG 3205: Climate Chg Foundations

  3.00 Credits

  University of Utah

  
  Graduate students should enroll in GEOG 5205 and will be held to higher standards and/or more work. In this course we explore the distribution of climates around the world. We will investigate energy and moisture in the atmosphere, atmospheric circulation, controls of regional and microclimates, applied climatology, climatic variations, and consider past and future climates. This course is elemental for understanding the impacts of climate change on life on our planet.
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• GEOG 3210: Global Climate Change

  3.00 Credits

  University of Utah

  
  Earth's climate is changing more rapidly than in any point in human history, making climate change one of the most significant threats to current and future generations. We currently have the solutions needed to address climate change, but it is imperative that we put these solutions into action before a tipping point is reached. This class will look at the 4.5 billion years of the Earth's history to learn about past climate changes, and the scientific tools we use to reconstruct them. Students will learn about what causes climate change across different time scales, how humans are contributing to current and future climate change, and the personal and collective actions they can take to address climate change.
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• GEOG 3270: Global Patterns of Life

  3.00 Credits

  University of Utah

  
  Biogeography is the study of the distribution of plants and animals across the Earth's surface and throughout time. This course introduces students to these global patterns of distribution and the factors that determine these patterns. Biogeography is an integrative field of inquiry that combines concepts from ecology, evolutionary biology, geology, and physical geography and uses the perspectives and methodologies of geography. Topics will include biodiversity, the study of global patterns of biotic distributions, limiting factors to those distributions, patterns from past geologic times, conservation and management of living ecosystems, and island biogeography. By the end of the course, students should be able to understand and use biogeographical terminology; be able to map the distribution of and describe the Earth's major terrestrial biomes; and be able to ask biogeographical questions. Ultimately, students will gain a better understanding of the environment surrounding them.
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