All life requires water to survive. Where do we get our water? Where does it go? Will there always be enough? How can we manage our water resources to ensure there is enough? What policies affect these decisions? This course explores these topics using a systems approach to gain an understanding of how our water resources are intimately tied with the surrounding ecosystem. Topics include the water cycle, hydrologic budgets, urban stormwater management and low impact development.

In this course we will explore the fundamentals of catalysis and how they manifest in enzymatic systems. We will use nature's "simplest" catalyst, the proton, to examine the physical principles of catalysis, followed by iron as a "simple" redox catalyst. These two models will be used to address the similarities and differences between homogeneous chemical catalysis and enzymes, including their substrate specificity, regio- and stereoselectivity, and enormous rate accelerations.

Recent advances in analytical chemistry and instrumentation play a major role in many interdisciplinary sciences, including environmental science, biology, agriculture, geology, and in many health science fields. This course will cover those advances in analytical atomic spectroscopy (inductively coupled plasma-mass and atomic emission spectroscopy -- ICP-MS, ICP-AES), analytical molecular spectroscopy (infrared, UV-visible), electrochemistry, and chromatographic techniques and associated instrumental methodologies.

In this course, students will be introduced to the modern study of dynamical systems, the interdisciplinary field of applied mathematics that studies systems that change over time. Topics to be covered include: phase space, bifurcations, chaos, the butterfly effect, strange attractors, and pattern formation. The course will focus on aspects from dynamical systems that are particularly relevant to complex systems. Students will complete group explorations and a substantial independent project. Prerequisites are the Calculus in Context sequence (or equivalent).

This course is for any science and related studies concentrators who wishes to further develop their quantitative skills.

This course is a continuation of NS132, NS140, and NS156 and will provide students a path for completing independent and collaborative projects centered around the Kern Center living building on Hampshire's campus. Students will learn skills in independent and collaborative research, project design, grant writing, presentation, and science writing. Students may use this course to develop project proposals for summer work as part of Integrated Sciences III or to prepare them for work in Division II. This course is open to all students from NS132, NS140, NS156 or by instructor permission.

Linear algebra is valuable for explaining fundamental principles and simplifying calculations in Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Biology, and Economics. In this course, we will focus on different applications based on course design and student preferences. These will include applications to chemistry, cryptography, economics, genetics, geometry, geology, heat distributions, marketing, image compression, Markov chains and networks.

Introduction to Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Natural Resources Management: Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are evolving computerized tools that greatly facilitate describing, modeling, and managing our natural resources. In this course, we will learn GIS tools, specifically ArcGIS and Google Earth, necessary to map and analyze natural resources, focusing on the Hampshire College campus. We will learn about making and using maps, using technology ranging from counting footsteps to satellite navigation (Geographic Positioning Systems, GPS).

Environmental microbiology is the study of microbial activity and diversity in both natural and artificial environments. The subject is inherently multidisciplinary-relying upon contributions from analytical chemistry, geosciences, environmental engineering, public health, ecology, evolution and microbiology. Microbes represent the very origin of life on earth, and they comprise the basis of our biological legacy. They remain crucial to global biogeochemical cycling, which supports the continuance of life on our planet, turning over those elements that represent the basic ingredients of life.

This course extends the concepts, techniques and applications of an introductory calculus course. We'll detect periodicity in noisy data, and study functions of several variables, integration, differential equations, and the approximation of functions by polynomials. We'll continue the analysis of dynamical systems taking models from student selected primary literature on ecology, economics, epidemiology, and physics. We will finish with an introduction to the theory and applications of Fourier series and harmonic analysis. Computers and numerical methods will be used throughout.