48 graduate courses in the Fall 2025 Graduate Calendar.
This seminar class will provide a foundational analysis and overview of concepts and methodologies in several aspects of spatial data handling: cartography, geographic information systems, remote sensing, spatial statistics, including analysis of spatial data sets. *eligible for MES
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course focuses on the extraction of hydrologically-relevant parameters from remote sensing that are germane to cold regions such as snowfall, snow cover, glaciers & ice caps, lake and river ice, permafrost, and seasonally frozen ground. The determination of hydrological parameters in the liquid and vapour phases such precipitiation, soild moisture, surface water, and evaporation/evapotranspiration from remote sensing, as well as the integration of remote sensing data into hydrological models are also covered. Prerequisites: UW undergraduates: GEOG 271, 371, 471 or undergraduate Geomatics degree. Undergraduate Geography degree with suitable remote sensing experience. Students with no remote sensing experience but strong GIS experience are required to take a 675 Directed Reading course entitled "Remote Sensing Analysis" prior to enrolment in 602. *eligible for MES.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course will explore how remote sensing is used and in concert with empirical or physically-based models to help us better understand Earth system processes from the local to global scales. Students will learn how remote sensing measurements are coupled with radiative transfer models, energy and mass balance models and spatial analytical models from different components of the Earth system. Examples will be drawn from the hydrologic and carbon cycles from the human built enviornment. Prerequisites: UW undergraduates: Geog 271, 371, 471 or undergraduate Geomatics degree. Undergraduate degree with suitable remote sensing experience. Students with no remote sensing experience but strong GIS experience are required to take a 675 Directed Reading course entitled "Remote Sensing Analysis" prior to enrolment in 603. *eligible for MES.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
An overview of spatial statistics and their use in geographic studies. *eligible for MES.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Introduces the fundamentals of GIS at a graduate level, including cartographic best practices, map projections and coordinate systems, georeferencing data, quantitative mapping, web mapping, and introductory spatial analysis, including clustering, network, and multicriteria analysis. Intended for students without significant experience in GIS. *eligible for MES.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
An overview of high-resolution remote sensing systems and advanced study of image segmentation, data fusion, feature extraction, and change detection algorithms. Topics include 3D city modeling, land use/cover classification, urban heat island study, urban sprawl monitoring, and risk mapping. *eligible for MES.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course introduces students to key theories, concepts and techniques that have been developed recently to improve the design support capabilities of spatial information systems. Topics covered include participatory GIS, group-based spatial decision support systems, and the integration of multi-criteria analysis (MCA) methods with GIS to facilitate decision-making in planning. *eligible for MES
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Examination of industrial location theory, and themes concerning the role of manufacturing in the space-economy. Factors of location will be considered as will the way that manufacturing has led to spatial disparity on international, regional and local levels.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course offers a critical examination of the innovation, knowledge creation and circulation, and governance processes that underpin contemporary economic development in cities and regions. Strategies, policies and programs that are intended to support and promote innovation and economic development in urban and regional economies are analyzed.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Community Economic Development is a field of theory, process and practice that is concerned with understanding the forces shaping communities and finding sustainable local solutions to economic needs. This seminar course will examine topics such as capacity-building, asset-based strategies, social capital, poverty-alleviation, social enterprises and co-operatives, and comprehensive community initiatives, using international and local examples and case studies.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course covers study design, and data management, visualization, and statistical analysis. The primary focus will be the development and understanding of generalized linear models as they are foundational to most analyses in Environment and Ecology. Students will learn to fit models to data and assess model fit. Students will also be introduced to the use of the statistical software R and provided the opportunity to use that software to manage and analyze their own data. Special topics will be developed based on the needs and interests of the students and may include hierarchical modelling, multivariate statistics, survey analysis, non-linear modelling, or other topics. Students are expected to bring their own computer. Students may be provided the opportunity to work with their thesis data if those data have been collected and are congruent with course learning outcomes and objectives.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
The course provides an overview and hands-on application of the quantitative analytical methods regularly used by professionals in economic development and related fields. Emerging analytical tools and techniques are explored.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This seminar class provides a foundational analysis of the transdisciplinary scope of Human Geography by critically evaluating key concepts and theoretical approaches that have defined the evolution of the sub-discipline in the contemporary period. Through a range of learning strategies including peer learning, academic critique, and debate, students will assess how their own research interests and activities contribute to ongoing conceptual developments in Human Geography.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
A seminar on selected topics of particular relevance to understanding and planning for contemporary processes of metropolitan change in Canada. Major topics represent an interrelated set of exogenous forces, (globalization, economic restructuring, technological innovation and immigration and demographic shift), and endogenous structural responses, (central city decline, revitalization, dispersed styles of suburban development and new urbanist and ecologically sustainable styles of planned intervention).
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This advanced graduate seminar examines the emergent possibilities associated with work in cities of the future. It theorizes the central role that work plays in everyday urban life, highlighting how work is spatially and socially unevenly distributed and how inequality continues to structure labor markets in cities. It engages with 'future of work' discourses to examine the complex role of technological change in urban labor market transition, as well as questioning the prominence of technological change in such transition. It focuses both on sectors privileged by mainstream theories of urban development (e.g., high technology and the creative industries) and sectors ignored by such theories but that nevertheless remain essential for the functioning of urban centers, including unpaid, informal, and care work. It questions the role of work in everyday life by highlighting dominant working norms and resistance to them, e.g., in calls for redistributive justice through unionization and collective action, anti-work discourses, and campaigns for a four-day work week.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course is designed to investigate the range of qualitative research methods (research tools) employed by human geographers and explore the methodological justifications (philosophical or theoretical underpinnings) for using this type of research approach. Qualitative methods attempt to interpret meaning as opposed to purely measuring phenomena. The focus of qualitative research is not descriptive measurement and prediction of phenomena, as offered by statistical description/analysis, but is more attuned to examining subjective understandings and the interpretation of meaning (hermeneutics). This course will examine and evaluate the range of research tools comprising qualitative methods including: various interviewing methods, participant observation, ethnography, case study methods and dicourse analysis. It will also engage with the theoretical debates and philosophical approaches that underpin qualitative research.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course emphasizes both theoretical and conceptual frameworks, techniques, practices and methods for analysis of development, focusing in particular on the development - environment interface and questions of sustainability.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course examines sustainability issues relevant to tourism. Conceptual and practical examples related to economic, environmental, and social/cultural sustainability of tourism are critically appraised, combined with reviews of policy and institutional effects on sustainability practices. The course also focuses on best practices in sustainable tourism within government, non-government and private sector.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course involves graduate students in a participatory, seminar-style environment that critically examines current research in earth system science emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of the science. Using a combination of individual reading, academic critique, peer learning and group discussion, students will develop knowledge related to the contextualization of their own research and how this contributes to ongoing developments in earth system science.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Advanced study of boundary-layer meteorology. Energy balance regimes for complex surfaces are examined. The theory of turbulent and radiant transfer is studied using field data collected during the course. *eligible for MES.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
An overview of current issues and methodologies in geomorphology with special emphasis on processes operating in fluvial, glacial, periglacial or coastal environments. *eligible for MES.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Laboratory (hydraulic) models and sediment transport theory are emphasized in the analysis of modern and ancient (Pleistocene) landforms of fluvial and glaciofluvial origin. *eligible for MES.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Overview of hydrological processes with emphasis on Canadian examples related to the hydrologic cycle, surface hydrology, groundwater hydrology, and measurement techniques. *eligible for MES.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Selected topics on the distribution, classification, functional dynamics, and ecosystem structure of wetlands. A scientific basis for wetlands management is emphasized. *eligible for MES.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course examines the use of stratigraphic records from lakes to reconstruct environmental change. Topics include sediment coring techniques, radiometric dating methods, analysis of physical, geochemical and biological indicators, and case studies demonstrating applications to address scientific and management questions. Practical experience is gained from a lake sediment coring field trip and subsequent laboratory analyses. *eligible for MES.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course examines the interaction in both space and time between hydrological processes and lacustrine environments. Applications to freshwater ecosystem management are explored.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course focuses on ecological and biogeochemical processes that are linked to the terrestrial hydrological cycle and how these relate to the management of natural resources. The objectives of this interdisciplinary course are to explore topics that integrate ecosystem processes with physical hydrology and examine the impacts of human activities on ecohydrological and hydrochemical processes within terrestrial systems. This course focusses on the storage and movement of water, solutes and nutrients within selected ecosystems (forests, agricultural, wetlands), considering the biogeochemical consequences of human activity such as climate change, wetland drainage, agriculture and forest harvesting.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Eutrophication, caused by excess nutrients (phosphorus and nitrogen) entering water bodies, results in nuisance and harmful algal blooms, and is a major global threat to water quality and water security. This course explores eutrophication drivers, pressures and impacts on the quality of freshwater systems, from watershed to global scales. Students will learn about the sources and biogeochemical cycling of nutrients along the aquatic (stream-river-lake) continuum, and ecological responses in receiving water bodies. Environmental thresholds for setting water-quality standards and nutrient criteria will be discussed. Students will learn about agricultural beneficial management practices and wastewater management to reduce nutrient inputs to freshwaters. Students will examine the benefits and challenges of sustainable nutrient stewardship in combatting eutrophication, and learn about how this knowledge is used in water-quality management, through international examples.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Current research and practice in resource and environmental management. *eligible for MES.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course builds on thematic areas of climate change, resource management, and sustainability. The evolution of Canadian resource management is traced from subsistence, utilitarian, and intrinsic value perspectives. The current state of resource management is critically evaluated, and alternative ways of thinking about conservation programming will be considered. (Note: This course involves a combination of lecture, class discussion and activities, student presentations, and a required multi-day field trip to Ottawa; field trip fee normally $300+HST; will not exceed $600+HST. Field trip dates will be determined no later than the end of the first week of lectures. Held with GEOG 456.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
An interdisciplinary approach to environmental planning. Focuses on the socio-economic, planning, environmental science, design, and decision-making theories and methods utilized in environmental planning theory and practice. Regional and local case studies and studio projects will be used to demonstrate professional practice issues and techniques. Recommended: A senior level course in ecology, environmental science, landscape architecture or equivalent. *eligible for MES.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
An ecological approach to planning national and provincial parks, focusing on system planning, master planning and park administration. Examination of the theory and practice of parks planning, utilizing ecological concepts. Recommended: a senior undergrad or graduate ecology course. Estimated additional field trip cost to student: $30.00 *eligible for MES
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course examines Indigenous knowledge-based approaches to environmental management. The first part of the course is dedicated to fostering a better understanding of and appreciation for Indigenous land-based philosophies and ways of knowing from across the Americas. Key differences between Western and Indigenous approaches to environmental management will also be highlighted. The second half of the course deals with finding more effective ways of integrating Indigenous land-use principles and knowledges in the management of Indigenous and non-Indigenous territories in Canada and worldwide.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Renewable and non-renewable energy supply systems are compared using economic and environmental measures. Consumption trends, conservation options and choices are considered at the household, community and global scales. Projects are used to demonstrate the economic and environmental challenges in the design of sustainable energy systems. *eligible for MES.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
An overview of issues, problems and concepts in international resource and environmental management. The complex nature of ecological/biophysical, economic, and sociocultural aspects of resource management will be explored, with particular emphasis placed on tracing challenges experienced in developing countries. *eligible for MES
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Topic(s) to be negotiated on an individual basis with faculty members. An outline for this course, approved by the professor in charge, must be submitted to the Program Director, within three weeks of registration.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
A critical approach to the development, implementation, and evaluation of civic technology and smart cities, with a focus on practical implementation considerations. Topics covered include open data, urban data collection and analysis platforms, digital inequalities, locational privacy, and digital infrastructures. Assignments are used to experiment with course concepts.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course reviews the evolution and foundations of contemporary economic development. It offers a critical appraisal of approaches and frameworks that are adopted to understand and analyze economic development processes at different geographic scales.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
An analysis of changing methods and philosophy of geographic research with emphasis on problem formulation and the design and evaluation of geographic research.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
The aim of this course is to provide academic credit for a foreign academic learning experience.This will take one of the following formats: study with a foreign expert, a specialized graduate course taken at a foreign institution, or a research/study project abroad conducted under the guidance of an approved advisor. In all instances the plan of study must be approved before a student leaves and in each case a final approved report must be submitted.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Seminar topics offered one time only, or to introduce a potential permanent course within the designated subject area.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Seminar topics offered one time only, or to introduce a potential permanent course within the designated subject area.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Seminar topics offered one time only, or to introduce a potential permanent course within the designated subject area.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
Seminar topics offered one time only, or to introduce a potential permanent course within the designated subject area.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course is for all new Master's students. The course provides an opportunity for cohort building while addressing the formal requirements and practical considerations for navigating the graduate program, as well as how to be successful in both the profession and in research. Topics include developing professional skills and networks, and understanding the broader purpose and scope of geographic research in society, including questions of equity, social justice, and reconciliation. This course includes student-developed topics and student-led opportunities. The course is assessed on a credit/non-credit basis.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course is for all new Master's students. The course provides an opportunity for cohort building while addressing the formal requirements and practical considerations for navigating the graduate program, as well as how to be successful in both the profession and in research. Topics include developing professional skills and networks, and understanding the broader purpose and scope of geographic research in society, including questions of equity, social justice, and reconciliation. This course includes student-developed topics and student-led opportunities. The course is assessed on a credit/non-credit basis.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course is for all new Doctoral students. The course provides an opportunity for cohort building while addressing the formal requirements and practical considerations for navigating the graduate program, as well as how to be successful in both the profession and in research. Topics include developing professional skills and networks, and understanding the broader purpose and scope of geographic research in society, including questions of equity, social justice, and reconciliation. This course includes student-developed topics and student-led opportunities. The course is assessed on a credit/non-credit basis.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines
This course is for all new Doctoral students. The course provides an opportunity for cohort building while addressing the formal requirements and practical considerations for navigating the graduate program, as well as how to be successful in both the profession and in research. Topics include developing professional skills and networks, and understanding the broader purpose and scope of geographic research in society, including questions of equity, social justice, and reconciliation. This course includes student-developed topics and student-led opportunities. The course is assessed on a credit/non-credit basis.
Archived calendar entryRequirements, Fall 2025Course outlines