INTERDISCIPLINARY PROJECT-BASED COURSE MODULES DEVELOPMENT AND INCORPORATION TO IMPROVE THE EARTH SCIENCE PROGRAM AND STUDENT RECRUITMENT

Earth sciences and agriculture reach far beyond the traditional production of life and living material. Producers now take advantage of the integrated inputs of earth science education such as GIS and remote sensing, the understanding of our planet's internal and external processes to create a multidisciplinary workforce. An illuminating example was the new partnership between National Aeronautics And Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that resulted in updating the Yellowstone National Park maps to better understand wildfires and improve management of California vineyards (Science Daily, NASA, USDA Will Bring Space Technology Down To Earth, retrieved November 2007). In 1977 the World Board and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) formed the Joint Agricultural Weather Facility (JAWF) housed at USDA which monitors the weather and assesses its likely impact on crops around the world. Earth science studies our planet-wide systems and their interactions. It is by nature interdisciplinary. It embraces geology, geophysics, oceanography, atmospherics, chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics and applied sciences by transcending disciplinary boundaries to treat the Earth as an integrated system. It seeks a deeper understanding of the physical, chemical, biological and human interactions that determine the past, current, and future states of the Earth. The study of Earth as a system of processes and phenomena that can be observed in our everyday world (e.g. weather, climate, natural hazards, water, air and life, etc.) brings relevance to the fundamental disciplinary understanding that must precede any integrative approach. Chemistry, physics, biology, and mathematics can be taught using the Earth as the example, leading simultaneously to an understanding of disciplinary processes as well as an appreciation of the Earth system's complexities. Rather than studying chemical processes or soil sciences abstractly, the Earth can provide compelling examples such as rock and mineral weathering, acid rain, or ozone destruction. Physics of convection can be taught using the atmosphere or the mantle as case studies and Earth system models can be used to better understand mathematics.