4DEE-Aligned Syllabus for Land Use in the American West

This resource is a complete 4DEE-aligned syllabus and course framework for GEOG 3342: Land Use in the American West, an asynchronous online undergraduate geography course taught in an accelerated summer format. The course is structured around six cumulative analytic lenses: ecological constraints, historical trajectories, governance and institutions, tradeoffs and uneven impacts, evidence interpretation, and futures under ecological constraint. Students apply each lens to a single project location throughout the term, culminating in a final integrative land-use analysis. The course emphasizes geographic reasoning, spatial analysis, and interdisciplinary humanenvironment systems thinking. Weekly modules combine readings, spatial datasets, guided walkthroughs, and scaffolded lab assignments that gradually increase student independence. Assessments prioritize analytical reasoning, evidence interpretation, and synthesis rather than memorization. The syllabus is explicitly aligned with the Ecological Society of Americas Four-Dimensional Ecology Education (4DEE) framework. Each module maps learning objectives onto ecological concepts, scientific practices, humanenvironment interactions, and cross-cutting themes such as scale, systems, path dependency, and transformation. The resource may be useful to instructors seeking models for integrating environmental geography, ecology education, and systems-based pedagogy into online or general education courses.