Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs (2008)
Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs (2007, 2008)
Numerical lab assignments for Environmental Science for Sustainable Development (U6240)

This is a sequence of five labs (using Matlab) designed as the primary assignments for first-year Ph.D. students in this course. They introduce students to several numerical modeling and data analysis techniques used in the environmental sciences. They also introduce students to Matlab and programming (they assume no prior knowledge); they build on one another sequentially. Anyone is welcome to read them, use them, assign them, etc. If you have feedback, let me know. (If you want solutions, email me.)

Lab 1 – Disasters (tutorial, introduction and hurricane Ivan)

Lab 2 – Climate (numerical solutions to differential equations, pollution and climate models, modeling the greenhouse effect)

Lab 3 – Water (analysis of multi-dimensional data, mapping, ordinary least squares, digital elevation models, introduction to simulation)

Lab 4 – Ecology (population dynamics, simulation of brownian motion, inference using non-parametric maximum-likelihood estimation)

Lab 5 – Health (demographic models, disease transmission in networks, coupled human-environmental systems, complex simulation)