Sustainability involves working across a range of different domains such as climate science and climate change; hydrology and water resources; food, agriculture, and land systems; ecology and biodiversity conservation; natural resource economics; health and environment; and pollution and waste management. It also involves working in different environments and contexts such as the tropics, arid regions, temperate regions, coasts and oceans, cities, and river systems. Adding to the complexity, humans are impacting the environment at an unprecedented rate and knowledge of the dimensions of global change and its impacts on the environment is crucial. Evidence-based solutions to sustainability issues in these contexts and environments requires a solid scientific foundation. While you don’t need to be an expert in each of these fields, it helps immensely to have a broad understanding of the science underpinning environmental processes and global change dynamics. Sustainability professionals need to be able to speak the same language as discipline experts and be able to piece together the big picture surrounding complex issues spanning people’s interaction with the environment. This unit will provide the basic scientific foundations across the key disciplines in environmental science and global change, spanning a wide range of sustainability issues and environments.