Final Reflection Paper
This course has provided a very comfortable atmosphere that promoted an interactive discussion among students including myself. Sharing thoughts about environmental issues with my group members and classmates during the discussions was helpful in broadening my views and knowledge of environment. Beyond having discussions about the lecture materials, we, as a group, got an opportunity to discuss about environment related articles found by group members. The discussions about four different articles from four group members not only updated me with current environmental issues but also helped me expand the lecture materials on real life events.
There have been many changes in my previously superficial perspective on the environment. Before taking the class, it seemed that the environmental studies were primarily related to science, especially ecology, and understanding how our current environment comes to exist would only require scientific aspects of nature. However, after reading environment-related paper and articles over the course, I realized that environmental studies involve a number of various areas of study in order to be thoroughly examined. It did not take too long to find that economy was most obviously and deeply concerned with the causes and solutions for environmental problems. Although I had a rough idea about what kind of material would be covered in environmental studies lectures, it came to a great surprise when soil science was mentioned as one of important subjects to study. Unlike global warming, air and water pollution, and deforestation, land resource as itself sounded relatively less important for me who came from a city where most of the ground is covered with cement rather than soil and grass. Learning about a significant impact of land transformation on Earth, I now consider land resource as one of fundamentals supporting the entire ecosystem. Of the environmental topics studied over this course,...