This course examines the dynamics of ecosystems and the environment from local to global scales. In the course we focus on 1) understanding the drivers of environmental change from decades to millennia; 2) the responses of Polar, Temperate and Tropical regions to environmental change and their roles in further reinforcing change to both climate and ecosystems; 3) human-environment interactions and 4) methods and concepts that enable you to interpret environmental change. We examine the concepts of systems, thresholds, feedbacks, sensitivity and fragility, and how this relates and aids our understanding of environmental change. We examine the importance of past events in understanding of environmental change and explore the importance of past events in understanding the present and future.