Course details
For an MSc award you must successfully complete the 120 credits of taught modules and a 60-credit master's research project.
The structure of the course reflects the core themes of environmental management, considering both the natural processes that shape our changing environment, and the anthropogenic causes of environmental change. As well as introducing you to the fundamental theories and arguments of environmental science, the course exposes you to a wide range of fieldwork and laboratory activities. These activities develop skills in teamwork, planning, data collection and analysis, and presentation, linking theoretical ideas and concepts to tangible processes, environments, and situations. You develop a rounded understanding and experience of the diverse scope of environmental management, gradually building up layers of knowledge, skills, and experiences. These culminate in the personal research project, an opportunity for you to research a topic aligned with your interests, demonstrating the knowledge and skills acquired during the course.
You are encouraged to take up opportunities of voluntary placements with local industries to conduct real-world research projects. These placements are assessed in line with the assessment criteria and learning outcomes of the Project module.
Examples of past MSc research projects
A feasibility study of the application of zero-carbon retrofit technologies in building communal areas
Assessment of the climate change impacts of the Tees Valley
Carbon trading opportunities for renewable energy projects in developing countries
Demand and supply potential of solar panel installations
Energy recovery from abandoned oil wells through geothermal processes
Exploring the links between carbon disclosure and carbon performance
Exploring the potential for wind energy in Libya
Hydrothermal carbonisation of waste biomass
Potential for biochar utilisation in developing rural economies
Wind energy potential in Thailand
Waste management in Yaounde, Cameroon
Course structure
Core modules
Climate Change
Climate change is an urgent challenge facing humanity and this module will provide the scientific knowledge and understanding needed to address this challenge. You explore how the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, cryosphere and biosphere interact to shape earth’s climate, a dynamic system on both temporal and spatial scales. Global climate is changing in a manner that is unprecedented over the past 800,000 years. The evidence that human activity since the onset of the Industrial Era has significantly perturbed the earth’s natural climate state is all too clear from the palaeoclimate and instrumental record. Rising global temperatures, warming oceans, retreating ice sheets, declining Arctic sea ice, sea level rise, weather extremes, ocean acidification, coral bleaching, are all lines of evidence that climate change is occurring.
Conservation
This module develops topical themes from the wider field of conservation science for you to gain an overview understanding of a range of conservation actions and the latest thinking. There will be a focus on the science and thinking that underpin conservation, using a multidisciplinary approach straddling, bioscience, ecology and geoscience. Key topics include, but will not be restricted to, global change biology, invasion and disease ecology and rewilding conservation strategies.
Environmental Management
This is a multidisciplinary activity which aims to ensure maximum human benefit from the natural world whilst minimising degradation to natural habitats and ecosystems. You addresse key issues for the professional environmental manager including:
• identification of appropriate social, financial, environmental and technical outcomes from a human-environmental interaction
• selection, operationalisation, recording and reporting of appropriate measures of environmental conditions and potential impacts from an activity
• consideration of the regulatory environment
• the Environmental Impact Assessment, the Environmental Statement, and the Environmental Audit, ISO14000.
Global Energy Resources
The oncoming climate catastrophe is the biggest existential threat to humanity today. Emissions of greenhouse gases are mostly due to energy generation; and where we are and how we have got here through fossil fuels will be discussed. Methods to decarbonise energy will be explored as will the possible routes to a cooler, greener future in which there is more worldwide social equality, without sacrificing lifestyles or the environment.
Global Water Resources
Water as a global resource is introduced in this module and you develop skills in exploring competing perspectives on water resource usage and management through the construction and presentation of evidence-based argument. Through interactive lecture sessions, you learn about global water circulations, both natural and anthropogenic; the competing nature of rivers as major resources of fresh water as well as potential environmental hazards; current and emerging pressures on the earths freshwater resource; and approaches being adopted to sustainably manage this previous resource.
Research Project
This module will provide an appropriate environment for an in-depth investigation of a subject relevant to the programme chosen and the continued development of cognitive, professional and transferable skills. It aims to unify your understanding and awareness of engineering or science as developed in the programme, with individual and independent research and analysis on a selected topic within the discipline. It also aims to expose you to the management of a significant project and to enable you to apply research methods relevant to your specific field and related discipline.
You investigate problems which involve the consideration of relevant legal, social, ethical, environmental and other professional issues.
You will be expected to develop and practice a professional approach to the presentation, delivery and appraisal of your written and oral presentations.
Sustainability and Society
Sustainability is more than just maintaining a balance between economic, social, and environmental matters – it is about the critical appraisal of how humans use the planet, and the harm this is causing. You critically investigate the relationship between sustainability and society by approaching sustainability, in a context of climate breakdown, as a vital concern for society, studying it through key theoretical, conceptual and empirical studies. By encouraging interdisciplinary thinking across scientific, socio-cultural, and environmental perspectives, you develop a stronger and more critical understanding of sustainability and how it can be achieved.
