Module GEOG2551: ENVIRONMENTAL PROCESSES AND MANAGEMENT

Department: Geography

GEOG2551: ENVIRONMENTAL PROCESSES AND MANAGEMENT

Prerequisites

• None.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• Provides students with a context and an overview of a range of contemporary environmental issues and debates.
• The module aims to link the physical processes at the earth's surface with the multiple ways in which these are managed.
• In this way, the module will increase students' understanding of the interactions between physical and human processes involved in managing the environment.
• Through using case studies and in-depth analysis of specific environmental issues, the module will enable students to assess the current state of the environment with respect to both its past history and potential future change.

Content

• Introduction to environmental processes and environmental management.
• Key concepts: The changing scale of environmental problems and management.
• Monitoring, modelling and prediction.
• Risk, uncertainty and public understanding.
• Social responses to risk and vulnerability.
• Policy instruments and institutions for environmental management.
• Managing waste: global to local: Defining waste.
• The international trade in hazardous waste.
• Managing nuclear waste.
• Municipal waste management and the role of the public.
• Managing mountain sediment systems: Living in an unstable environment.
• Process and impacts: natural disturbances.
• Process and impacts: anthropogenic factors.
• Future issues: remediation and living with change.
• Risk estimation and complex systems: the west Antarctic ice sheet: Understanding risk and hazard.
• Risk estimation.
• The role of risk estimation in policy-making.

Learning Outcomes

• Students are expected to be able to: Describe a range of current environmental problems, recognise past management practices and predict potential future issue.
• Explain the operation of physical processes and the ways in which they can cause challenges for managing the environment.
• Compare and critically analyse different approaches to environmental management in a variety of environments and settings.
• Demonstrate their understanding of both theoretical debates and empirical through case studies and grounded examples.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Key issues, processes, ideas and debates will be explained in lectures.
• New concepts will be introduced in lectures, and developed and discussed in class as well as in tutorials.
• Independent learning will be facilitated by asking students to prepare for class based discussions and tutorials.
• Knowledge of past, current and future environmental management issues and environmental processes will be tested in examinations.
• understanding of theoretical debates and empirical issues, as well as particular case-studies, will be tested in examinations and coursework.
• Outside formal teaching sessions, student learning will come from activities including library and group research.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

In line with Board of Studies policy for all Level 2 optional modules, formative assessment is provided through formative feedback on summative coursework.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University