Climate change is an urgent and multifaceted challenge facing all of society.
Harvard faculty teach an expanding array of courses examining the many dimensions of this shared challenge. Explore courses in climate and sustainability ranging from economics and English to public health and climate science.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
THE SALATA INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE AND SUSTAINABILITY
The seminar will provide the foundation for a Department of Landscape Architecture exhibition, “Forest Futures,” scheduled for the spring of 2024, which will explore the topic of shade and environmental justice.
Our planet and its biodiversity are in peril. We will begin by exploring the state of the planet and how we got here before focusing on what can still be done to conserve Earth’s remaining biodiversity, considering the biological, societal and ethical considerations of conservation in a changing world.
The goal of the course is to introduce the global potential of plants as a means of design for shaping the character of a place for individual and collective human experience.
Through lectures, discussions, readings, case studies, and design projects, the goal of this course is to understand the complexity of living systems to integrate it in landscape design.
This studio will explore the complex environmental and social interests of multiple forms of landscape labor—people at work in working landscapes—through the design of regional frameworks and localized sites in coastal Massachusetts.
This course will consider the challenge of climate change and what to do about it. Students will be introduced to the basic science of climate change, including the radiation budget of the Earth, the carbon cycle, and the physics and chemistry of the oceans and atmosphere.
The course covers climate dynamics and climate variability phenomena and mechanisms, and provides hands-on experience running and analyzing climate models, as well as using dynamical system theory tools.
Fundamental concepts and formalisms of conservation of energy and increase of entropy as applied to natural and engineered environmental and biological systems.
This course will examine the theory and practical application of environmental chemistry and toxicology for assessing the behavior, toxicity and human health risks of chemical contaminants in the environment.
The macroscopic description of the fundamentals of heat transfer and their application to practical problems in energy conversion, electronics and living systems with an emphasis on developing a physical and analytical understanding of conductive, convective and radiative heat transfer.
This course will showcase how novel technologies have allowed fascinating new insights into key aspects of our environment that are of high societal importance. Students will gain both an understanding of topics such as climate change and air pollution as well as detailed knowledge of the design and underlying principles of environmental instrumentation, especially via the hands-on laboratory sessions.
