Foundations of Geospatial Science: GIS and Remote Sensing for Climate Change and Sustainability

Build a strong geospatial foundation to evaluate climate and sustainability challenges

This course introduces the core concepts, data, tools, and methods of geospatial science for understanding climate change and sustainability challenges. It develops spatial thinking as a foundation for analyzing how climate impacts vary across space and scale. Students learn about key geospatial datasets (environmental, climate, and socio-economic), their sources, scale, and limitations, and gain practical skills in GIS and remote sensing. Topics include spatial data models, projections, basic GIS operations, raster and vector analysis, satellite sensors, spectral characteristics, image visualization, and index generation. Through hands-on work using open-source geospatial software, students apply geospatial methods to problems such as land use change, heat stress, water scarcity, and environmental monitoring, while also reflecting on data ethics and uncertainty. By the end of the course, students can analyze geospatial datasets, create spatial visualizations, and design a geospatial approach to a climate-related problem.