To transform communities within our discipline and better serve the places we study, reciprocal relations with land and place must be included in the training of geoscientists. While traditional and community knowledge of landscapes extend for millennia, there are many barriers to integrating scientific research with place-based knowledge that has long been undervalued and excluded within the academy. The devaluation of place-based knowledge by some in the geoscience community deters many people with deep cultural ties to place from persisting within geosciences. This deterrence contributes to the position of geosciences as the least diverse STEM field and hinders the ability to meaningfully engage with communities experiencing problems of geoscientific significance.
Many of geoscience's shortcomings are directly tied to the historic value of placelessness for researchers and geoscientists who are expected to be rootless and mobile to study the Earth through neutralizing lenses. We propose addressing place and land in geoscience contexts from multiple perspectives to reject inherited values hindering geoscientific study and impact in communities. Place-based education (PBE) in geoscience has demonstrated the ability to engage more diverse groups in geoscience learning and transform relationships between geoscientists and natural and cultural landscapes. However, few studies have thus far investigated the efficacy of PBE infused with critical perspectives from environmental justice. Here, we present two years of data on place attachment, science identity, and student self-efficacy to assess practices in the classroom that emphasize engagement with place through reciprocal relations with land and water in the American Southwest. Using water as a topic of convergence in the arid lands, this course facilitates the interrogation of geologic and human relationships around scarce resources and emphasizes the interconnectivity of human-Earth systems and place-building in lands where water is life.