Environmental Studies

The course offers an introduction to the concept of a product's life cycle and its environmental impact. It explores the problem of environmental impact in industrial production as well as in the service sector. 

The objective of this course is to approach the dynamics of vegetation and animal communities at different spatial-temporal scales, from the distribution of large terrestrial biomes to the current evolution of landscapes. Based on the analysis of the conditions determining the development of living organisms and different plant formations, the class emphasizes the factors of biome distribution, the distribution of species, floristic and ecological heritages, the dynamics of plant groupings and animal populations and the role of human societies on the modification of ecosystems and landscape dynamics. At the end of the semester, students should know the broad principles of the study of the biosphere and the principle processes active in plant environments.

This course explores the multitude of ways in which human development and the environment are connected. It provides an understanding of key theoretical, conceptual, and practical debates and issues within the agriculture/environment-development field and allows students to practice interdisciplinarity through active participation in discussions and group work. The course explores the intersections of economic growth, social development, and environmental conservation. It considers important development questions such as the reason for hunger and famine, how globalization affects access to resources and social dynamics, and how gender inequality intersects with development. Sessions are devoted to epistemological reflections for each of these themes. This course places particular focus on countries in the Global South. 

This course examines the important role of fire in Australian landscapes. It covers how fire has shaped the diversity of life in Australia over millions of years, how people have been using fire to modify Australian landscapes for millennia, and how contemporary fire patterns influence human society and ecosystems. Topics include combustion and fire behavior, prediction of fire patterns, fire ecology of plants and animals, Indigenous burning, climate change and future fire, and approaches for using fire, managing fire and sustaining biodiversity.

This course is directed at understanding specific air quality issues in 3 themes: 1) at the global 2) regional and 3) local (urban) scale. At each scale, the focus is understanding the life cycle of natural and anthropogenic air pollutants, i.e., the processes behind emission, transport in the atmosphere, chemical conversions, and deposition on the land/ocean surface. The role of meteorology on air pollution mixing and transport is explicitly explained on each scale. The course pays attention to the effects on human and environmental health, as well as the feasibility of alternatives and the efficiency of regulation and policy. On the global scale, the focus is on tropospheric chemistry, the greenhouse effect, and stratospheric ozone. On the regional scale, the focus is on the deposition of air pollutants (clouds, precipitation, wet deposition, dry deposition), acidification, and eutrophication, with ample examples by means of the nitrogen cycle. At the local scale, the focus is on traffic and industrial emissions, the role of vegetation, and photochemical smog. Each theme is completed with a tutorial, in which problem-solving is practiced as exam training.