Topic:  Principles of Environmental Science

Description: [?]Preferred language style: English (U.S.)• Choose a problem that interests you.

• It must have a physical/chemical environmental science component and

be amenable to

quantitative analysis.

• Your task is to write a technical brie?ng paper on your problem

(imagine you have been hired

as a consultant or delegated by your employer to solve the problem).

• The paper should describe the problem, present a review of the

scienti?c principles involved,

outline a simple model, and use the model to solve the problem or

recommend the next steps in

solving the problem.

• The aim is to think the problem through, distilling the essence of

the problem, which can then

be handled with a back-of-the-envelope small set of calculations.

• Be sure that your model is integrated into the text description of

your project. Motivate the

model, describe how it works and interpret the results, using these

results to underpin your

conclusions. In technical prose, about half your persuasive power

rests on your words and

about half on your numbers, and everything depends upon making the two

work together.

• You may ?nd Excel (or other more sophisticated programming tools)

useful when problems

get a bit more complex than those in the problem sets. You are

strongly encouraged to do this.

• You can pick a big problem like the effect of anthropogenic CO2 on

global climate change or

a small one, such as how to grow a good lawn without allowing excess

nitrogen fertilizer to run

off or leach downwards.Informal guidelines:

– state the problem

– simplify the problem

(develop a model that can be quanti?ed, draw diagram)

– obtain input values & assumptions

– do calculations, get numbers

– interpret results (so what?)

– explore parameter space (what if?)

– offer advice

(policy, management decision, personal behavior, …)