I thought Professor Garrison was an animated lecturer and clearly very passionate and interested in the material. That was super helpful for me, since I didn't find it as interesting but his energy helped me stay engaged. The lectures were pretty clear and well paced, but the exams were a bit difficult. The course was a bit chaotic because Professor Garrison taught the first four weeks, Professor Smith taught the next four, and the Professor Garrison came back for the last two weeks of the quarter. Because of this we did not get our midterm scores back til a bit later. Professor G gives prelecture quizzes for almost every lecture on the textbook readings, which ask very specific questions but you get unlimited attempts. The labs were easy and the TAs were incredibly kind and genuinely wanted to help students out (they even held a career panel for us where we could ask questions about research, grad school, working, etc.) The only things for our grades were pre-lec quizzes, the labs, the midterm, and the final. The two tests are each 25% so I would study early, and actually read the textbook because its helpful in filling in greater details that we don't have time for in lecture.

I generally felt like this class was decent, but I wasn't a big fan of the grading distribution and structure of the class.

25% of your grade is participation, which involved attendance, a discussion section presentation, and answering questions in lecture. No attendance was taken after I think week 2, so basically everyone got all the points here if they did the presentation (which was easy, and while we never got grades for it, I'm pretty sure it was graded very easily).

20% of your grade is from two quizzes, which were of middling difficulty. These were on week 3 and week 5. Most people I talked to got decent grades on them, but not good ones. They are timed, multiple choice and short answer quizzes based off of lecture. Because the lectures cover so much information, the quizzes can be a little difficult. It is open note, but again you have a time limit that really prevents you from fully looking up questions. After week 5, there are no more exams, so you can basically check out and not pay attention to lectures anymore. The rest of the grading is on projects where you do your own research, so while lectures can help, they aren't particularly important going forwards.

20% of your grade is from two short assignments, which was a memo (3 page short essay) and a 2 minute speech/testimony. You worked with a partner. Both assignments were on the same topic. I thought the grading was mostly fair, but you had to work for an A on these assignments.

35% of your grade was the final project, where you worked with a group of 5-7 people. 25% was for the final paper and 10% was for the final presentation. The final paper was 20 pages max and was a super detailed research paper about a given topic. You have a good amount of time to work on it, and the large group made it manageable. He gave you feedback on your outline and then your draft. He really wants citations and numbers, so you have to do a large amount of research. I think our paper had almost 10 pages of double spaced citations by the time we finished. The final presentation was 10 min long, and it was difficult to condense all of the info in the 20 page paper into a 10 min presentation. Time limits were strictly enforced. I never got my grade back for the paper and the presentation, but given my final grade and my grades on the other assignments, I think I did decently well. I think that the grading is probably strict but generally fair given how much time and feedback you receive before the final draft is due.

I found lectures to be somewhat dense and not helpful at all after week 5, and discussion sections didn't even meet half of the time. There were also a lot of weekly readings, but I didn't think they were important and didn't do them. I thought the class was interesting enough, but the second part of the class was stressful due to all of the projects. I think it's a decent class to take if it fills a requirement for your major/minor.

The class was taught mainly by professor Garrison, he was an engaging lecturer despite lecturing on pretty boring material. The second half was taught by professor Smith who taught on biodiversity and by professor eagle who lectured on climate change and the oceans. I wouldn't recommend taking this as a ge, since it does require a lot of reading, and 2 short writing assignments. I overall enjoyed the first half of the class more than I liked the second half. I really didnt like that it was taught by multiple professors but it was an overall doable class.
I'm selling the Environmental Geology book by Carla W. Montgomery 10th edition for $30, needed for professor Garrison's portion of the class. If interested text me at **********!

I liked the "midterm" project where we prepared a debate on water use/rights with one other student. A very manageable "group" project. The final project was difficult to coordinate with 6 other students in the final 2-3 weeks of the quarter when we're all very busy. The lectures were super interesting and the prof, guest speakers, and TAs are obviously all very passionate about water rights and drought in California. Decent upper div that's not to complicated even if it's a bit of work and feels tedious at times

Professor Garrison is a good lecturer. His presentations were engaging and well related to the textbook material. The class grading was based on Labs, one-page papers on scientific articles once-ish to every-other week, and the midterm and final. My TA (Ariege) was very unclear about whether the labs were completion or correctness, they are NOT completion. You have to actually make sure you are getting the right answers. Just check with your classmates/TA at the end to make sure it's right.
The one-page papers were fine but my TA graded them kinda hard. Make sure you're really connecting the given article with the article that you find. There literally was no rubric so ask your TA a lot of questions about what they want in order to get a good grade. 85s on these almost brought my grade down to a B.
The tests weren't bad just do all of the textbook readings (as the class goes on!! do NOT try to cram, there is just way too much material so just keep up with the syllabus) and you get a one page cheat sheet which was greeeat. Make sure you copy down graphs and diagrams. All in all I really liked this course. Pretty easy, interesting (I might be biased as an envsci major), and labs were fun. I would take again. Ariege was a good TA but she just graded kind of hard but I would still recommend taking her just make sure you are clear about the criteria for the papers.

The subject material was super interesting (as an environmental science major) and he also brought in professors from other fields like Conservation Biology and Environmental Policy/Justice. The midterm was surprisingly hard (the average was a C) but he provided extra credit to make up points. The final ended up not being as bad as the midterm and most people I heard got their grades bumped up. Overall, a great class and great professor!

This class was great! Garrison clearly is passionate about the subject and his lectures are engaging and helpful. 50% of our grades were from lab-- three one-page discussion papers on an article, one group presentation, and labs on the other weeks-- and there was a couple extra credit opportunities. The midterm had an individual multiple choice and short answer sections, and a group multiple choice section. Same for the final. There were a couple guest lectures which were lowkey boring af, but there were a couple questions on the final about them. I would highly recommend if you are an environ major and this class made me feel good about my major choice :)

Environ M10 is great with him and Prof. D'Auria. He's really funny and knowledgeable. Overall he's not so helpful but the merits should suffice.
His part of the course is slightly too fast-paced. He did cover two CHAPTERS in one class and the reading was overwhelming. However as he said, the class shouldn't be so easy. Therefore I really learned much and was genuinely interested, as a math major student.
His final is kind of hard but doable. Plus there's Rafaella's easy questions.
This is not a GE but I never regret it.

This was a fun class taught by Professor Garrison and Professor Paulson. There were a lot of relevant topics and the professors try really hard to tie most of it in with California or LA. Professor Garrison's lectures are fast paced so you do have to pay attention if you want to catch everything. He does post his slides, but the timing of this is unreliable.

Overall a very interesting professor and cool class.

Taught by Professor Garrison for majority of the quarter, two weeks on conservation biology by Professor Tom Smith, and a few guest lectures throughout the quarter. Professor Garrison is very friendly and helpful in office hours, h is always willing to help. The class material wasn't the most interesting but he did a great job at always keeping the lectures engaging. Tom Smith was interesting, his lectures included a lot of information and stories from his time doing research in Africa, heavily in the Camaroon. If you are an environmental science major you will likely have to deal with Professor Garrison for many things in the future, so might as well get to know him.