Course description

MSc Environmental Monitoring, Modelling and Reconstruction focuses on analysing past, present, and future dynamic environments, providing you with the skills for a career in environmental management or consultancy, and a firm grounding for research in the environmental sciences.

Concerns over the human impact on the environment have stimulated demand from governments and industry for the monitoring, analysis and modelling of natural processes in environmental systems. This is essential if we are to improve understanding of the interrelation of environmental variables in order to predict and manage their responses to anthropogenic perturbations.

Studying this course, you will gain:

• advanced theoretical knowledge and practical expertise in order to collect, interpret and analyse contemporary and past environmental data;
• modelling skills, in order to investigate the interrelationships between environmental variables, and to predict their responses to changing internal and external conditions;
• intellectual and practical skills, in order to design and undertake field and/or laboratory experiments in contemporary environmental process-monitoring, or palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, and to design and test appropriate environmental models with the data you collect.

We also use the proximity of Manchester to the upland areas of the Peak District; several past MSc students completed dissertation work in close collaboration with various organisations responsible for land management in the Peak District, giving their work direct policy relevance.

Aims

The overall aims of the programme are for students to acquire:

• the appropriate level of advanced theoretical knowledge and practical expertise required to collect, interpret, and analyse contemporary and past environmental data;
• the modelling skills required to investigate the interrelationships between environmental variables, and to predict their responses to changing internal and external conditions;
• the intellectual and practical skills required to design and undertake field and/or laboratory experiments in contemporary environmental process-monitoring, or palaeo-environmental reconstruction, and to design and test appropriate environmental models with the data they collect.

Coursework and assessment

Taught units comprise two-thirds of the course and are assessed by a wide range of project work, essays and presentations.

There are no formal examinations.

The remainder of your course consists of the dissertation.

Career opportunities

Geography graduates have particularly great employment prospects, and go on to shape environmental policy through positions in the public and private sectors.