Welcome to the Department of Environment and Society. We deliver undergraduate education in environmental studies, recreation resource management, geography, and geospatial information science. We deliver graduate education in interdisciplinary environmental social science, ecology, recreation resource management, geography, and environmental policy. Our researchers use the social, environmental, and interdisciplinary sciences to understand human-environment interactions at a range of spatial scales and to bring human considerations into natural resource and environmental management.
Our faculty promote people-centered solutions for sustainability transitions and for climate change adaptation, mitigation, and resilience. Together, we have expertise in various disciplines and fields, including archaeoecology; ecological economics; ecology; environmental, social, and behavioral sciences; geographic information science (GIS); human-environment geography; land change science; natural resource and environmental policy; and recreation resource management.
Values of community engagement inform our teaching, and we are USU-certified as a Community-Engaged Department. We also aspire to be inclusive in our teaching, research, and Extension practices, to forward the goals of socio-environmental justice, and to work towards greater diversity of community.
Peter Howe, an associate professor of geography in the Department of Environment and Society, has been named associate dean for academics in the S.J. and Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources. Howe is stepping into the new position recently creat...
Previous dean of QCNR, Chris Luecke, announced his retirement from the college in December 2022. His research and service have shaped the QCNR community in significant and lasting ways over the course of his career.
Snowpack, important to summer water supply, melts away in March. Mammoth swaths of lakebed surrounding the Great Salt Lake are now cracked and windblown. Perhaps it should be no surprise that at the top of Utahns’ list of concerns for 2022 is water supply...
