Environmental Earth Science
Earth's geologic record shows environmental change across time scales from seconds to billions of years, and this MIT OpenCourseWare course examines the processes behind it. Lectures and readings cover how plate tectonics, weathering, erosion, and climate interact to shape landscapes and control environmental conditions over time. The course serves as a foundation for MIT's Environmental Earth Science Field Course, which later applies these same principles to fieldwork in the American Southwest, so the material here emphasizes the underlying geologic mechanisms rather than field techniques themselves. Materials include the full set of course lecture notes, assignments, and readings as published by MIT OpenCourseWare, free to access with no enrollment required. There is no certificate, consistent with MIT's open courseware model, but the syllabus and materials are complete enough to work through independently.