Educational Offerings/Resources

CIESIN regularly offers undergraduate and graduate courses through several different schools and departments at Columbia University, held at either the Morningside campus or the Lamont campus. CIESIN also provides a wide variety of online resources, including mapping tools, for K–12 teachers and students, college classrooms, and graduate-level education and research.

Academic Courses, Winter/Spring 2010  l  Academic Courses, Fall 2009  l  Online Educational Resources

Academic Courses, Winter/Spring 2010

Title: GIS for Public Health
Course #: EHSC P8371.001
School: Mailman School of Public Health
Instructor: Mark Becker
Description: As geographic information systems (GIS) emerge as an essential tool for public health researchers and practitioners, this class aims to help students apply spatial analysis techniques to public health research questions. Lab exercises challenge students to incorporate analytic skills and techniques acquired in other courses with the geospatial and spatial statistic techniques commonly used in GIS. Guest speakers from government agencies and non-profit organizations share their real-world examples of GIS in public health research and practice.

Title: Environmental Data Analysis
Course #:ENVP U6224
School:School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA)
Instructor: Susana Adamo and Mark Becker
Description: Via a combination of lectures and laboratory exercises, this course will provide a rigorous examination of the statistical analysis of environmental data in different contexts. We will look at emerging tools and methods for environmental data analysis across four topic areas:climate change assessments, environmental justice, land use and land cover change, and impacts of natural hazards on populations. Within these topic areas we will explore applications of multilevel modeling analysis, regression techniques, risk assessment, cost-benefit analysis, cluster analysis, and data visualization techniques. Underlying all our analysis will be the goal of learning how to apply statistical and data visualization techniques to affect policy and decision-making. All laboratory exercises will illustrate the research process from data collection to publication.

Academic Courses, Fall 2009

Title:  Advances in Ecology, Evolution & Environmental Biology
Course #:  EEEB G6150.001
School: Arts and Sciences, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology
Instructors: Ruth DeFries, Marc Levy, Rob Rose, Damien Joly
Description: The class uses GIS and remote sensing tools to explore the connections between emerging infectious disease, land use, and climate in specific landscapes, including some of the Wildlife Conservation Society's “living landscapes” and other landscapes where researchers have developed relevant data sets. GIS is used to overlay spatial data sets such as land cover, climate, wildlife habitat, and remotely-sensed imagery. The class work in teams to write assessments of risks of emerging infectious disease in a number of landscapes. A background in GIS and/or remote sensing is required.

Title: Environmental, Conflict, and Resolution Strategies
Course #: INAF U8909.001
School: School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA)
Instructors:Marc Levy, with teaching support from Alex Fischer
Description:This seminar explores the linkages connecting phenomena of political conflict, environmental change, and natural resource management. It aims to deepen understanding of these linkages through application of analytical models and examination of empirical case studies. It is meant to be of equal interest to students whose interests are primarily theoretical and those whose interests are mainly practical. The course is intended to work in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme Post-Conflict and Disaster Management Branch.

Title: GIS for International Studies
Course #:ENVP U6275.001
School:  School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA)
Instructor:Mark Becker
Description:This course provides students with a comprehensive overview of geographic information systems (GIS), global positioning systems (GPS), and remote sensing technologies as they are used in a variety of social and environmental science applications. Lecture format is integrated with hands-on exercises to impart an understanding of the variety and structure of spatial data and databases, the principles of raster- and vector-based spatial analysis, basic cartographic principles for producing maps that effectively communicate a message, and sound practices for GIS project design and management. 

Title: GIS for Resource, Environmental, and Infrastructure Management
Course #: E4009
School: Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering
Instructor: Greg Yetman
Description: This class introduces basic GIS concepts including geomatics, spatial data representation and organization, and analytical tools and applies them to solving a variety of problems including watershed protection, environmental risk assessment, material mass balance, flooding, asset management, and emergency response to natural or man-made hazards. Technical content includes geography and map projections, spatial statistics, database design/use, interpolation and visualization of spatial surfaces and volumes from irregularly spaced data, and decision analysis in an applied setting. Term projects emphasize information synthesis towards the solution of a specific problem. Permission of the instructor required. 

Online Educational Resources

E2C (Earth to Class)

The E2C program brings together researchers from Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory and Earth Institute with local K-12 teachers and specialists in curriculum and technology integration from Teachers College Columbia University and Colégio Bandeirantes, São Paulo, Brazil, to enrich earth science curricula for K–12 students and to support development for their teachers. The program is centered around a series, “Saturday Workshops for Educators,” which features scientists from the Lamont community presenting topics in their area of expertise, often involving new areas of research. CIESIN participates by offering hands-on workshops on using new data products and becoming familiar with various levels of spatial data visualization techniques that are designed to be integrated into the classroom.

Environmental Sustainability: Perspectives on the World

This multi-media teaching module was developed in collaboration with the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning and Fathom.com. It includes talks, video clips of presentations by Columbia University scientists on the environmental systems and human responses that make up environmental sustainability, and an online mapping tool with data from the Environmental Sustainability Index. Issues covered include climate change and past civilizations, human impacts on the Arctic environment, sustainability in the Sahel, sustainable design, industrial ecology, and international environmental regimes. Environmental Sustainability: Perspectives on the World is free to Columbia University students and staff; $45 for others.

Hudson River Watershed Mapper

This online mapping tool lets users integrate more than 70 sources of Earth Science, socioeconomic, and cultural information to create customized maps of the Hudson River Watershed. The Hudson River Watershed Mapper also acts as a gateway to a sensor network placed within the Watershed, that reports near real-time data under the auspices of several environmental agencies and organizations.

Interactive Mapping Tool/U.S. Emissions Data

This interactive mapping tool lets users visualize CO2 emissions data for the entire United States. Produced by CIESIN, the tool is part of NextGenerationEarth, a Web site of the Earth Institute at Columbia University that offers climate change information. The mapping tool flexibly interacts with the underlying data, from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Census Bureau, and U.S. Commerce Department.

Metro-East Coast Regional Climate Assessment Education Module

This study of the Metropolitan East Coast (MEC) area is one of eighteen regional components of the U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, organized by the U.S. Global Change Research Program. The MEC Educator's Pack is a package of GIS software, datasets and lesson plans designed for educators who are interested in using GIS technology to explore global climate change issues. The package includes a free GIS software program called ArcExplorer, a registered trademark of Environmental Systems Resource Institute (ESRI), the world's leading GIS software developer. The datasets available include much of the data used in the MEC project such as the climate change models, GIS data from ESRI and the U.S. Census Bureau's TIGER Files. Also provided are two lesson plans that use ArcExplorer to view the data and produce a series of maps to study climate change predictions in the MEC region. See also: U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change and CIESIN’s Climate Change Information Resources for the New York Metropolitan Region. a registered trademark of ESRI.)

Thematic Guides on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change

CIESIN’s Thematic Guides offer overviews of some of the key topics and issues that pertain to the human dimensions of global environmental change. The guides are designed to complement data-access tools such as the CIESIN Gateway by providing context and background information.