Geography (GEOG)
Description: Introduction to the scientific, social, and economic dimensions of historical and contemporary water systems. Students will develop an understanding of hydrologic systems and analyze and engage in decision-making about complex challenges associated with water resource use.
This course is a prerequisite for: SCIL 300
Students who have previously taken GEOG 100 may not receive credit for GEOG 140.
Description: Human populations, cultures, and landscapes, with particular attention to human-environment relations and global interconnections.
Students who earn credit toward the degree in GEOG 155 may not earn credit toward the degree in GEOG 150 or in the combination of GEOG 150 and 152.
Description: Investigation of the basic elements of the physical environment of the earth and its atmosphere. Includes atmospheric processes, temperature distributions, weather systems, severe weather, climates, water balance, vegetation and soil distributions, landforms and their processes, and natural hazards. Modifying influences that humans have on the physical environment and atmosphere examined.
Description: Interdisciplinary study of the natural environment, social environment, human heritage, arts and humanities of the Great Plains.
Description: Exploration of urgent global environmental issues and their relationships with physical, social, biological, and economic process. Investigation between human activity, wellbeing, and environmental change. Topics include landscape transformation, climate change, environmental health and disease, and water quality.
Prerequisites: Good standing in University Honors Program or by invitation.
Description: Topic varies.
Description: Examine current problems in geography.
Description: Values and processes in human landscapes and natural environments. Concepts and tools to understand the context of local and global environments and significant historical landscapes. Landscape as an indicator of aesthetic quality, design principles and processes as integrators of humans and nature, and the garden as a model for creating sustainable landscapes.
Description: Introduction to theories and methods of Geographic Information Science (GIScience) and Geographic Information Systems (GISystems). Focuses on spatial thinking, analysis skills, and the fundamental knowledge needed to use GIS effectively, accurately, and ethically. Topics include: geodesy, cartography and geovisualization, map projections, geospatial data collection, GPS, spatial data models, spatial databases, and spatial analysis.
GEOG 140 recommended.
Description: Basic factors influencing the location of economic activity. Influence of space and location on the evolution and development of economic systems. World and regional patterns of economic activities.
Description: Introduction to the regional geography of North America. Attention to the significance of location, advantages and limitations of the natural environment, population distribution, and economic development considered regionally.
Description: Appraisal of the interaction between the physical environment, the human resources, and economic activities for the major regions of the world. Application of fundamental geographical concepts to regional analysis.
Prerequisites: High school chemistry or one semester college chemistry; one course in geology or physical geography or soil.
Description: Survey of the water science from the perspective of both natural and social sciences. Water budget, precipitation, evapotranspiration, runoff and stream flow, groundwater, water quality parameters, economics of water, water policy, water law and water politics.
Description: Explore human environmental interaction on the Great Plains. Samples a variety of Great Plains cultures and time periods to explore past use of the Great Plains environment. Evaluation of attributes and related data critical to the operation of past social-ecological systems with reference to changing climatic/ecological dynamics, human environmental impacts, and the sustainability of various indigenous and western modes of land use on the Great Plains. Investigate knowledge of these processes and how they can be of relevance to contemporary issues of Great Plains land management and resource utilization.
Prerequisites: Permission.
Description: Research experience.
Biogeography is a highly interdisciplinary science, relying heavily on ecology, geological science, and climatology. It is global in scope and offers the latest knowledge in understanding organism distributions, and the factors that determine those distributions.
Description: Introduction to the basic concepts of biogeography, the study of distributions of plants and animals, both past and present.
Prerequisites: 6 hrs geography.
Description: Introduction to maps and mapping with emphasis on applied and theoretical considerations in map design and construction. Students create computer maps from specifications of instructor. Opportunity to actively participate in the technical processes of data collection, cartographic design, and construction normally associated with the actual production of maps.
Description: Traces the sequence of the human occupancy of the Great Plains from prehistoric times to the present. Focus on the changing perception and utilization of the Great Plains environment, leading to the emergence of a distinctive contemporary region.
Description: Geography of cities and metropolitan areas of the past, present, and future. Spatial structures of urban settlements in North America and elsewhere examined both theoretically and descriptively.
Description: Examine the intersection of social, economic, and environmental sustainability in the context of rural landscapes in an increasingly urban and globalized world. Topics include the evolution of the rural landscape, associated major social transformations, the history of agricultural consolidation, the growth of rural industrialization, policy implications, and the resilience of rural people.
Description: Survey of the physical and cultural features of the geography of Nebraska as related to the changing patterns in the human occupance of the geographic regions of the state.
Description: The physical and human geographies of Europe. Population migrations, landscape change, and diversity of culture in Europe and selected sub-regions of Europe.
Description: The intersection of gender, identity, power, and representation throughout time and space in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada.
Description: Overview of the major physical and human landscapes in Africa. Prominent past and current events will be placed into a spatial context in an attempt to develop insight into the interrelationships that exist among people, cultures, countries, economies, and the environment, not only within Africa, but between Africa and the rest of the world.
Description: Topics vary.
Prerequisites: Permission.
Description: Independent reading or research under direction by a faculty member.
Prerequisites: GEOG major or minor, junior or senior standing.
Description: The history and philosophy of geography. Contemporary issues in geography.
Description: Exploration of the concept of environmental justice, which describes how the impacts of the natural and built environment differ according to race, ethnicity, and economic status. Topics include the development of movement from its early concerns with the location of waste facilities, to disparities in health outcomes, access to affordable and healthy food, and climate change issues.
Description: How space, spatial structure, and spatially oriented behavior operate in social systems, emphasizing their influence on interpersonal communication and/or social exchange.
Prerequisites: Junior standing, MATH 106 or equivalent, 5 hrs physics, major in any of the physical or biological sciences or engineering.
Description: Physical factors that create the biological environment. Radiation and energy balances of earth's surfaces, terrestrial and marine. Temperature, humidity, and wind regimes near the surface. Control of the physical environment through irrigation, windbreaks, frost protection, manipulation of light, and radiation. Applications to air pollution research. Instruments for measuring environmental conditions and remote sensing of the environment.
Prerequisites: GEOG 317 or GEOG 412
Description: Introduction to Internet-based GIS and web cartography. Focus on programming concepts underlying the creation and implementation of quality web mapping applications.
Prerequisites: Junior Standing
Description: Remote sensing of the earth from aerial and satellite platforms. Aerial photography, multispectral scanning, thermal imaging, microwave remote sensing techniques. Data acquisition and image analysis. Physical foundations of remote sensing using electromagnetic energy and energy-matter interactions. Applications in geographic, agricultural, environmental and natural resources analyses.
Prerequisites: Junior standing
Description: Introduction to the basic methods and practical applications of remote sensing to map, monitor and assess agricultural and natural resources and other environmental changes
Prerequisites: NRES 418/818
Description: Field techniques as they relate to remote-sensing campaigns. Research methods, systematic approaches to data collection, field spectroscopy, collecting ancillary information linked with spectroscopic data sets as well as aircraft or satellite missions and subsequent analyses of acquired data.
Prerequisites: GEOG 217
Description: Vector and quadtree data structures, use of relational database management systems, topologically structured databases, query languages, digital terrain modeling, advanced data analysis methods and research issues in GIS. Extensive practical experience with the current GIS software.
This course is a prerequisite for: NRES 922
Prerequisites: GEOG 217
Description: Geovisualization encompasses the techniques and concepts that underlie digital cartography and the broader field of spatial visualization, exploring cartographic applications of computer animation and multimedia for the dual purposes of assisting visual thinking in map-oriented research and data exploration, and in communicating geographic ideas to others.
Prerequisites: Junior standing.
Familiarity with mapping and GIS recommended.
Description: Integrated lectures, lab exercises and field experience provide an understanding of GPS technology and applications. Students will learn to collect, correct and use GPS data in a geographic information system (GIS) environment.
Description: The history of cultural geography from von Humboldt through Carl Sauer to the 'new' cultural geographies of Don Mitchell, Gillian Rose and Noel Castree. The current theoretical debates of feminism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism and environmentalism, and the influences of literary and cultural studies in the development of cultural geography and the various methodologies involved.
Prerequisites: GEOG 217
Practical experience or other formal preparation in GIS may be substituted for prerequisite by permission.
Description: GIS-focused programming, scripting, and spatial analysis using the Python and R programming languages. Topics include: the ArcPy library, algorithm development, open source geospatial libraries, and the manipulation and analysis of geospatial data.
Description: Threats against indigenous peoples' lands, resources and cultural patrimony, languages and knowledge systems more than 500 years after Columbus instigated European colonialism, creating the first global world order. The responses of Indigenous peoples to the imposition of Western dominated economic and political systems. Land rights, economic development, and women's rights from the perspective of different Indigenous communities around the world.
Description: Exploration of political economies of health care, the geographic distribution of services, the impacts of location in both care utilization and access, emphasizing the importance of "place" in health outcomes.
Description: Geo-demographic and geographic information system (GIS) analysis, interpretation and mapping of geographical patterns of population size, population composition, and composition change. Theoretical and applied investigation of geo-demographic issues involving marketing research, public facilities planning, public health provision, and small-area population change forcasting. GIS use of TIGER and small-area census data.
Description: Importance of factors of a physical, economic, and human character in political development at local to global scales; international geopolitical aspects of environment, territoriality, core areas, capitals, and boundaries; national geographical patterns of voting, representation, public administration and public policy.
Prerequisites: Junior standing or above.
Offered spring semester of even-numbered calendar years.
Description: Impact of climate and extreme climatic events on society and societal responses to those events. Global in scope and interdisciplinary.
Description: Study of geographic concepts and critical analysis of applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in humanities and social sciences and application of geospatial tools for humanities and social science research; learn how to collect, manage, analyze, and visualize spatial data for real-world projects
Prerequisites: PLAS/SOIL 153.
Description: Spatial relationship of soil properties on various parts of landscape typical of the Plains, causal factors, and predictions of such relationships on other landscapes. Grouping these properties into classes, naming the classes, and the taxonomy that results from this grouping. Application of a taxonomy to a real situation through making a field soil survey in a region representative of the Plains border, predicting land use response of various mapped units as it affects the ecosystem, and evaluating the effectiveness of the taxonomic system used in the region surveyed.
Prerequisites: Junior standing; MATH 106; 4 hrs physics; physical or biological science major.
Description: Discussion and practical application of principles and practices of measuring meteorological and related variables near the earth's surface including temperature, humidity, precipitation, pressure, radiation and wind. Performance characteristics of sensors and modern data collection methods are discussed and evaluated.
Prerequisites: Junior or above standing
Description: Seminar on current water resources research and issues in Nebraska and the region.
Prerequisites: Permission.
Description: Applying geographic concepts with field training.
Prerequisites: Permission.
Description: Research experience.
Prerequisites: Permission.
Description: Independent research leading to a thesis.
Prerequisites: Permission.
Description: Independent research leading to a thesis.