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The world at our feet: Reflections on Earth and its prospects
Humans have known for a long time that there was more than the earth beneath our feet that there was, in fact, a big-e Earth but it took a while before we figured out our place in relation to the sun and stars. Then space travel allowed us to see our whole home, surrounded by dark nothingness. Image: Mariya Pilipenko
We have learned that we can change the Earth in major ways unintentionally and unpredictably. Two centuries ago the deforestation of the east coast of the U.S. resulted in sediments washing down to fill the flood plains of rivers and the creation of coastal marshes. On the other hand, dams and reservoirs are holding back so much dirt that the Mississippi delta is now starved of sediment. At this point, human activity has added billions of tons of carbon to the atmosphere, raised global temperatures and sea levels, and increased the acidity of the ocean.
Reconsiderations of past, present, and future in a new environmental humanities book Featuring contributions from scholars representing a range of disciplines, ‘Timescales: Thinking Across Ecological Temporalities,’ is an outgrowth of the Penn Program for Environmental Humanities.
For a geologist, 200 million years may seem like the blink of an eye. To a historian, the
18th century is still highly relevant. And to researchers grappling with climate change, future scenarios provide a compelling reason to act now.
In the new book, “Timescales: Thinking Across Ecological Temporalities,” Bethany Wiggin of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH) and co-editors Carolyn Fornoff and Patricia Eunji Kim, both alumnae of Penn and PPEH, bring together reflections from experts in a variety of academic disciplines on the relationships between past, present, and future and what that means for a planet in crisis.
Studying plants from 400 miles up Using remote sensing data, senior Paul Lin looked for signals of climate change in the grasslands of the Great Plains. Paul Lin completed a senior thesis grounded in his dual interests in the environment and data science. (Image: Courtesy of Paul Lin)
For the last several decades, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has sent satellites to orbit the earth, using radiation reflected by the planet’s surface to generate data on weather to wildfires to urbanization.
To make sense of the reams of data these satellites accumulate requires expertise and coding that Paul Lin, a senior on the cusp of graduating, has acquired taking courses across schools and departments at Penn.
Share Learning tools and syllabus suggestions Teachable podcasts with suggested reading and recommended subject areas. Learning tools, course kits, syllabus suggestions. https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/learning-tools-and-syllabus-suggestions https://www.upress.umn.edu/logo.png
Learning tools and syllabus suggestions
Teachable podcasts with suggested reading and recommended subject areas. Learning tools, course kits, syllabus suggestions.
Whether you re looking for syllabus suggestions or whether you re an independent reader looking for continuous learning inspiration, here are free
teachable podcast episodes and the books they pair with from University of Minnesota Press.
Subjects: