Australia: Environment and Society

An introduction to the human and environmental geography of Australia, including Australian geology, ecology, society, and culture. Topics include analysis of current events in Australia and current resource management problems using Google Earth and other tools. Australia is a settler country, the scene of indigenous genocide, a former English colony, a mythical unknown, a biophysical puzzle, home to a startling diversity of life, a cradle of modern democracy, and a powerful industrial economy with a rich resource base. It thus serves in many ways as a mirror for the US - even matching the US roughly in size, if not in population. The two countries share many elements of a common history and biogeography and yet the human and environmental geographies of the two countries have traced very different paths into the modern world.