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Use this as a blueprint for studying (strategy at the bottom, source material first). Keep in mind the exam will be on Tuesday May 6th and Wednesday May 7th. See assignment descriptions for more detail. All the source material–assigned readings, lecture material, videos–can be found here. 

Topics

• Climate change: Concepts and problems; data and importance of oceans and ice; sources and sinks; 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics; natural climate change and human-driven [anthropogenic] change; humans, geography and inequality;  island geography (week 1 of source material page)
• Climate change: Mitigation, action, approaches like stabilization wedges, biomimicry, geoengineering;  colonialism and modern global inequalities; US climate policies and their possible impacts; 
• Risk, vulnerability, geography of risk (there are several maps): Mobility, displacement, migration, vulnerability, etc.; Ulrich Beck’s notion of a ‘risk society’; geography of rapid onset events/risks (in maps, mostly); 
• Migration (check out source material from weeks 3-5): Lincoln City, NC and issues surrounding displacement, recurring flooding, government response, poverty and race, housing, insurance, etc. ; voluntary and forced migration, ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors, ‘intervening obstacles’ between origin and destination (and complexity of ‘origin’ and ‘destination’); videos of migration in Europe, Middle East, Central America (see week 5 in source material)
• Terminology (some of which can be found in readings but also the glossary assignment page)

Making up small groups

Here is the small group midterm prep file, you should spend 50-60 minutes on this–use it as an opportunity to study for the exam and pull together concepts (and email as an attachment). 

Strategy

Page 2 of the small group is really broad, but the point is to bring together the elements of the class so far. If you need to see them, the source material page and this study guide are efforts to put most of it in one place. 

If you try to just sit down and memorize everything, you will feel overwhelmed, and you won’t have developed any effective retrieval strategies when you’re taking the exam. So my advice is to create a story of the class, because stories allow you to pull in disparate elements and connect them. They can ‘stick’ in more than one place, so this helps your mental file cabinet. Then read through your story/narrative, expand, critique it, cross-check it with the source material and study guide, and send me emails if you have questions. I will respond, but I will also post the responses at the bottom of the study guide for everyone in the class to see.