How do geographers go about addressing the challenges and problems of the world? What does it mean to think, speak, write and research 'geographically'? Consistent with current emphasis in critical geography, all geographers are using both theory and politics in their work. Thinking carefully about these issues helps to understand the relationship between scholarship (geographical or otherwise) and the "real world," while at the same time facilitating reflexive and careful consideration of research topics and approaches. This is not a survey course that will exhaustively introduce you to all 'key debates,' past and present, in the discipline. Rather, drawing on a range of diverse approaches spanning cultural, political, urban, and economic geography and beyond, this course will introduce students to a diverse range of questions geographers have posed and how they have sought to answer them by combining geographical theory, methods, and praxis.

This course provides students with an opportunity to develop or advance their understanding of social research methods through in-depth examination of research approaches, design, ethics, rigour, and a range of qualitative and some quantitative methods. Specific methods covered in the course include onone-one interviews, focus groups, surveys, as well as emerging methods (e.g., photovoice, remote/virtual interviews). The course also covers cross-cultural approaches to research. The goals of the course will be to provide students with the knowledge needed to effectively evaluate research, understand the process of research design, formulate research questions, and develop a research proposal.

(MA/MSc level.) Reading courses allow students to complete coursework in topics not covered by current course offerings in Geography or Planning. Students requesting reading courses must work with a faculty member and follow the guidelines.

The Graduate Department of Geography and Planning offers a mandatory course on topics of interest to physical geographers and is centered on the dissemination of information useful for the career advancement of master's and doctoral students. Seminar presentations from both U of T faculty and invited researchers will be given to introduce students to the Department's physical geography research clusters. Practical information on how to write funding applications, paper abstracts, and how to give effective oral presentations will also be covered. Discussions of multi‐perspective issues such as the supervisor‐student relationship, women in science, the peer‐review system, authorship, and evaluating success in academia will be led by students. The actual content of the course will vary from year to year depending on the specialty of instructors and the interests of enrolled students.

Hydrology and ecology are inter-related disciplines in Earth science. Hydroecology is a branch of ecology with emphasis on the effects of hydrological processes on living and non-living organisms and on their relationships in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. In particular, the redistribution of water over the landscape through surface and subsurface water flows regulates energy, mass, and carbon fluxes from the land surface to the atmosphere, affecting the plant distribution and productivity as well as regional and global climate. In this course, a user-friendly, menu-driven hydroecological model will be used in practice to give a hands-on experience for modeling. Methods for handling spatial datasets, including those derived from remote sensing, will also be taught.

Biogeochemistry explores the intersection of biological, chemical, and geological processes that shape the environment. In an era of unprecedented human-induced environmental and climate change, research in this field is advancing rapidly. This seminar course explores the biogeochemical cycles of major and trace elements including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur and mercury, and examines how humans alter these cycles resulting in many of the environmental issues we are faced with today, such as eutrophication, climate change, ocean acidification and pollution by toxic contaminants. Additionally, the course focuses on the mechanisms controlling biogeochemical processes at local to global scales, including interactions between abiotic and biotic factors, such as climate, redox conditions, microbial metabolism, and ecology.

High latitude environments are becoming the focus of increasing scientific attention because of their role in global environmental change. The implications of changes occurring to the sea ice and snow cover are far reaching and can have impacts on physical, biological and human systems both within and beyond the region. This course will provide a comprehensive examination of climates of high latitudes. Topics that will be covered include the Arctic energy budget and atmospheric circulation, the hydrologic cycle in the Arctic, the ocean-sea ice-climate interactions and feedbacks, modelling the Arctic climate system as well as an evaluation of recent climate variability and trends.

Quantitative research in the geosciences has increasingly relied on open-source coding in programming languages such as MATLAB, Python and R. Coding proficiency enables researchers to mine large datasets and analyze and model spatiotemporal phenomena with relative ease. This course provides hands-on training in MATLAB. The purpose of the workshops is to develop core competencies and confidence in data table operations, mining and management; working with self-describing, multi-dimensional datasets (e.g., NetCDFs); data visualization, mapping and production of publication-quality figures; statistical tests; principal component analysis; signal processing and time-series analysis; and linear regression modeling. This course is specifically aimed at students with little to no coding experience.

This course will take a hydrological perspective in examining the landscape controls on surface water quality. We will consider how the study of surface water and ground water hydrology lead to an understanding of stream water chemistry through the examination of hydrological flowpaths and the chemical interaction of water and the matrix/matrices through which it flows. An advanced understanding of hydrological processes will be emphasized. Pertinent field and laboratory techniques will be introduced.

Snow and ice dominate the Canadian landscape. There is virtually no area in Canada that escapes the influence of snow and ice. We skate on frozen ponds, ski down snow-covered mountains, drive through snow blizzards and watch how ice jams in rivers cause rivers to swell and floods to occur. The duration and the thickness of snow and ice increase rapidly northwards, and glaciers are found in mountainous areas and in large parts of the Arctic region. Given that snow and ice impact heavily on the Canadian way of life, this course seeks to understand the dynamics of snow and ice in a hydrological context. This course will examine snow properties, snow cover distribution, glacier hydrology, melt runoff, and ice in its many forms (lake ice, river ice, sea ice, and ground ice). This course will also examine some of the recent observed changes occurring in the cryosphere regions of Canada.

A comprehensive and critical treatment of the greenhouse gas/global warming issue and its relationship to other atmospheric environmental problems. Topics covered are: energy and emission scenarios, the carbon cycle, the climate response; impacts on agriculture, forests, water supply, sea level, and ecosystems; technical solutions, government policy options, citizen activism, and individual actions. By the end of course you should be able explain in simple terms the basic features of the climate and carbon cycle response to human emissions of greenhouse gases and the reasons for these features, be aware of the varying degrees of certainty or uncertainty associated with the major projected changes and the associated risks and understand what would need to be done to limit the damage and how it could be done in broad terms.

The course examines the options available for providing energy from the major carbon-free energy sources: solar, wind, biomass, geothermal and hydropower, and briefly touches upon nuclear energy and sequestration of carbon from fossil fuel sources. For each carbon-free energy source covered, the physical principles, physical or biophysical limits, efficiencies, and other constraining factors are discussed, as well as examples of current applications, current and projected future costs, and possible future scenarios. The course concludes with selected studies for various regions of the world of scenarios for achieving 100% renewable energy supply systems by 2050, in line with requirements needed to (hopefully) limit global mean warming to no more than 2-3 degrees Celsius.

The current ecological crisis is calling into question our ways of being human and of relating to the rest of the world. The course addresses the challenge of rethinking nature-society relations and issues of justice in the Anthropocene. It asks whether the concept of the Anthropocene and its variants, helps power (or not) emancipatory politics and visions for future that socially just and ecologically abundant. We will draw from Indigenous ontologies, Environmental Justice movements, transition discourses, and aspirations for "living well" as well as contemporary theories of affect, more-than-human geographies and new materialism to query and reimagine nature-society entanglements.

This course will examine current local to global issues of urban air pollution. Topics covered will include understanding sources of air pollution, human health effects and study designs, stages of urban development and air pollution, mitigation approaches, global challenges, and current air pollution issues by region. Measurement technologies and their applications, including low-cost sensors and regulatory grade instrumentation will be explored. Students will apply tools for spatial and temporal modelling of urban air pollution including dispersion modelling, spatial interpolation, remote sensing, and land use regression modelling.

This course seeks to understand the world of financial flows, intermediaries, and instruments, and how these may be related to the uneven geography of mortgage foreclosures, real estate inflation and deflation, bank bailouts, and government austerity programs. It explores how this geography of finance might be related to the production of financial crises, and how the global geography of international finance relates to the public finances of nations and municipalities, pension and hedge funds, and individual investors. The course begins by exploring the workings of international finance, and the literature on the geography of financialization and the globalization of finance. It then moves to examine the history and geography of financial crises to consider the different theories of financial crisis emanating from disparate political-economic-geographical perspectives, as well as the divergent policy implications that flow from such theories. The course then explores the literature regarding the localized effects of the geography of finance.

Building on critical assessments of the idea and influence of modernity, historical geographers have recently reconsidered subjects such as power and identity, human-environment relationships, and the genealogy of geographical thought. This course will treat modernity not just as a historical condition, but as a geographical project. Broad texts on modernity and its spatial dimensions will be read and discussed alongside a geographically diverse set of site-specific studies. Themes to be used for orientation include violence and anti-violence; science and empire; and cultures of modern urbanism.

This course reviews recent scholarship in geography and critical development studies that seeks to investigate and theorize the significant role of infrastructure in shaping political, economic, and social space, and also its efficacy as a genre of thinking. The course begins by revisiting the now-canonical literature on uneven development to capture some perspectives on what is at stake politically, and how best to conceptualize the development as a contested terrain of practice and representation. Drawing on science and technology studies, mobility studies, critical development studies, and contemporary urban theory (especially as they manifest in scholarship with geography and planning), we will engage infrastructure as materiality, as method, as terrain of expertise, as complex socio-technical system, as powerful political address, and as a critical political field.

This seminar focuses on the question of 'development' in the context of contemporary China, with particular attention to the development logics guiding change in urban and rural landscapes from the 1950s to the present. We will examine the institutions, initiatives, and narratives that have reshaped built and natural environments. We will also examine the structures of (im)mobilities and community in relation to the urban and rural — as sites and governing categories. Finally, we will explore the question of the 'global' in China's development, both in the earlier socialist periods and in the present, a period marked by rapidly expanding forms of direct engagement with development elsewhere.

Queer, as described by anthropologist Martin Manalansan, "is about messing things up, creating disorder, and disruptive commotion within the normative arrangements of bodies, things, spaces and institutions" (2015: 567). And in the words of poet Cameron Awkward-Rich, "transness, at minimum, is the insistence on the human capacity for once unimaginable change" (2020). In this course, we will explore queer and trans in this manner — as mess makers, disruptive forces, and sanctuaries for social difference. We will explore queer, and 2 trans thought as spatial thought, especially via their connections to postcolonial, critical race, and feminist theories. We will consider how dynamics of race, gender, class, colonialism, and geopolitics are central to expressions of sexual and gender identity politics, and how queer and trans theory and social movements build frameworks for social and spatial justice.

Growing numbers of scholars have called attention to the instrumentality of racial categories to the geographic organization of economic activities in capitalist systems. Seen as a constitutive part of capitalism itself, scholars argue that the key dynamics that drive economies within capitalist systems are articulated through and dependent upon hierarchical racial orders. As a justification for violent forms of dispossession, or way to naturalise or capitalize upon the unequal distribution of resources, rights, and privileges, capitalism's entanglements with racial distinctions continue to be crucial to the profitability and smooth functioning of all market economies. Black Geographies scholars argue that the racialized production of space is made possible by the routine demarcation of spaces associated with racialized bodies and communities as invisible and forgettable, or alternatively as hyper-visible and available for expropriation. This course aims to map the contours of a research agenda that interrogates the place of blackness in geographical of knowledge production about economies. In studying Black Economic Geographies, the aim is to introduce methodologies to mainstream Economic Geography that not only draw attention to the juridical and economic architectures that produce blackness as a metric in the production and circulation of capital globally, but also, the unique possibilities for futures based on co-operation, stewardship, and social justice that an understanding of racial subjugation as constitutive of the modern economy invites.

This course examines theorizations of conquest, decolonization, and liberation. The course is focused on Indigenous Studies/Indigenous Geographies by examining how anti-colonial resistance, refusal, and resurgence is embodied amid multiple intersecting oppressions such as (settler) colonialism, racial capitalism, heteropatriarchy, and white supremacy. The seminar brings Indigenous thought into dialogue with Black and anti-colonial thought to better understand the entanglements of colonial, racial and gendered violence and liberatory futures. The seminar is organized around book-length manuscripts, with some weeks focusing on entire books and others focusing on sections of a book paired with an additional book chapter or article.

This graduate course is offered to graduate students of diverse backgrounds, and therefore, it does not require prior training in remote sensing. The emphasis of this course is on the basic concepts and skills in using remote sensing data. However, graduate students are expected to learn additional skills in using remote sensing imagery for environmental research, as a way to encourage you to use remote sensing techniques for your graduate research.

This is an advanced remote sensing course emphasizing the quantitative approaches for the analysis of satellite remote sensing data. The focus will be on the algorithms and technical details of how these image-processing capabilities are implemented.

Building on GGR1911H Remote Sensing, which covers the basic theories and techniques of optical and microwave remote sensing of the land surface, this course introduces advanced theories and techniques for land cover mapping, retrieval of vegetation structural and physiological traits, and remote sensing of vegetation light use efficiency and photosynthetic capacity. Diagnostic ecosystem models will also be introduced for terrestrial water and carbon cycle estimation using remote sensing data. Optical instruments for measuring vegetation structural parameters in the field will be demonstrated, and high-resolution remote sensing images acquired from a drone system will be used as part of the teaching material and lab assignments.

(PhD level.) Reading courses allow students to complete coursework in topics not covered by current course offerings in Geography or Planning. Students requesting reading courses must work with a faculty member and follow the guidelines.

This seminar, which is intended for advanced graduate students, offers a chance to delve extensively into current topics, theories, approaches, and discussions that influence geographic investigation and practice. The instructor's areas of expertise and research interests determine the theme or topic of each seminar offering.

This seminar, which is intended for advanced graduate students, offers a chance to delve extensively into current topics, theories, approaches, and discussions that influence geographic investigation and practice. The instructor's areas of expertise and research interests determine the theme or topic of each seminar offering.

Introduction to the key concepts of international trade and international finance, with attention to contemporary issues and policy. Empirically assesses alternative trade theories, and examines international commercial policy, international finance, and macroeconomics, as well as their relationship to broader global issues. The course is designed to utilize understanding of international trade and international finance to help students think through real-world events and design policy responses. The supplementary readings thus deal with key world issues in order to illustrate the more abstract material and to engage with global economic policy challenge.

Analyzes the global security architecture, grand strategy, and contemporary and emerging security challenges. Topics may include the evolution of contemporary national security doctrines, the implications of shifting loci of power for global security, the role and limits of multilateral security arrangements, the role of intelligence and intelligence failure, and threat assessments of emerging or ongoing security problems such as nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and insurgency.