Introduction: the changing planetary system -- Earth's lithosphere: geologic time and building blocks -- Earth's lithosphere: plate tectonics -- The fluid earth: atmosphere -- The fluid earth: hydrosphere and air-sea interactions -- Our living planet: earth's ecosphere -- Biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nutrients, and oxygen -- Historical framework of global environmental change -- Human forcings on the ecosphere: world population, development and resource consumption -- The changing earth surface: terrestrial vegetation -- The changing earth surface: land and water -- The changing atmosphere: acid deposition and photochemical smog -- The changing atmosphere: pleistocene and holocene environmental change -- The changing atmosphere: global warming and stratospheric ozone depletion -- Human dimensions of global environmental change.