Earth System Science as Foundation for Further Disciplinary Study

Earth system science provides an excellent foundation for further study in the physical and biological sciences. The role of a foundation course is to ground a future course of increasingly specialized study in a broad framework framing the Earth sciences within an interactive system that engages the hydrosphere, atmosphere, biosphere and space.

Equally important, Earth system courses lend themselves to the use of global-scale data sets. Through data manipulation and analysis, students familiarize themselves with the wide range of remote-sensing techniques used by Earth system scientists, and gain understanding of the spatial and temporal scales at which analyses take place.