Graduate Study in Water Sustainability

A number of interdisciplinary courses are offered in the area of water sustainability covering water and wastewater analysis, and exploring the relationship between society and water ecosystems. Students in all four degrees sponsored by CEEP may develop specializations in this topic.

Regional Watershed Management
The course reviews the practical applications of watershed planning as a tool to manage land, water and ecosystem resources. Explores public policies and practices of watershed planning by examining case studies. Uses a multidisciplinary approach involving the fields of geography, environmental science, geology, public policy, land planning, geographic information systems (GIS) and engineering.

Water Quality and Pollution Control
This course covers water and its impurities, water quality criteria and monitoring, transport and transformation of chemicals in the aquatic environment, stream sanitation, ecological aspects of impoundments and eutrophication processes, groundwater systems, decontamination of subsurface water systems, land application of wastewater and current topics in water pollution.

Water and Wastewater Quality
Principles and applications of analysis of solids, organic load, dissolved oxygen, disinfectants, nutrients, trace metals, trace organic compounds and microorganisms. Lecture and laboratory.

Water and Society
Study of the physical occurrence and distribution of water in all parts of the hydrologic cycle: introduces the nature of human demands for water, the possibilities of obtaining additional supplies and the difficult legal, economic and political questions of management of water resources.

Water Budget in Environmental Analysis
The development of the climatic water budget and its use in understanding problems in hydrology, agriculture, forestry, urban planning and the distribution of environmental systems. Evaluation of the influence of different human activities on the factors of the water budget.

Topics in Water Sustainability
A tutorial surveying different conceptual and policy definitions of water sustainability. Readings of historical and contemporary discussions of the concept of water sustainability are used in conjunction with student-initiated research to develop an in-depth study of a specific topic such as sustainable watershed management.