Environmental Studies

This course examines how ecosystems function and how they provide services for humans: information which is essential for ecologists, conservationists, and land managers. The course considers examples of natural systems being altered by man to demonstrate how ecosystems function and the consequences of anthropogenic change. Disturbance and regulation in ecosystems, atmospheric, and hydrological regulation (including the greenhouse effect and acidification), soil ecology, conservation and management of natural resources, agricultural and grazed ecosystems (including GMOs), urban ecosystems, and aspects of sustainable development are also discussed.

This course assists in the understanding of the history of climate change on the Earth and the factors that cause it.  The course covers the causes of climate change and the history of climate change on Earth, and the contribution of historical climatology to this understanding. Students outline the key causes of climate change and their interrelatedness, discuss the history of climate change on Earth, both natural and anthropogenic, and use the principles of historical climatology to investigate past climate change.

This course provides an opportunity to appreciate the beauty of biodiversity from lecture instructor lectures and from field work in the NTU Experimental Forest. The course invites multiple instructors to provide general knowledge of biodiversity, sustainable development goals and the idea of 30 by 30. The course includes a five-day field trip to the NTU Experimental Forest where students conduct hands-on experiments with the instructors and discuss biodiversity management with the local community. 

This course introduces the basic principles of toxicology: the physical and chemical properties of poisons and their distribution processes (absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion); Toxicokinetics, and Toxicodynamics. The course also discusses the effects on toxic distribution, toxic reactions and mechanisms, and then the distribution of chemical substances in the environment. Finally, the course explains emerging technologies applied in toxicant metabolism and environmental toxicology, which is accompanied by a laboratory tour. 

This course provides an insight in the molecular-physiological mechanisms that plants use to adjust to their environment. Students learn how light, light quality, and daylength control plant growth and development. The course examines temperature as an environmental signal for plants, how the phytohormone mediate environmental impacts plant to plant competition, and plants and herbivores.

This course highlights the key food security considerations and research trends relating to sustainable urban food production. It covers the scientific and technological innovations in agriculture and aquaculture, with topics including genetics, nutrition and health involved in the production of fish and plants, and scientific considerations for a robust food safety system such as Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP)-based risk assessment and testing of different food safety hazards relating to different food innovations. The course develops an appreciation of the emerging risks in urban food production against the current backdrop of accelerating food production innovations and climate change. The course requires students to take prerequisites in General Biology and Chemistry.

This course covers the principles of rock deformation and the tectonic processes that drive this deformation. The goals of this course are the development of skills in the structural analysis of rock bodies to gain an understanding of the geometries, sequencing, and kinematics of deformational features; and understanding of tectonic principles and controls on rock deformation and mountain building. Students learn how to quantitatively evaluate strain distribution, stress fields, and the failure envelope; how to evaluate structures arising from polyphase deformation; and how to use these skills for geotechnical engineering applications. The course may include compulsory field trips.

This course explores the concepts of sustainability and social responsibility through a multidisciplinary approach, examining them from a scientific, social, economic, political, and artistic viewpoint. This course investigates the relationship between planetary boundaries, resource consumption and social development, and explores the range of interdisciplinary approaches to address these global challenges. It also covers the topics of sustainability metrics, personal contributions and sustainable lifestyles, as well as considering systems thinking, ways of knowing, power and responsibility as well as systemic structures and biases that may hold us in particular ways of thinking, being, and doing.

This course is aimed to train the undergraduate students of SOE in terms of both technological and management knowledge. It is thus a cross-disciplinary course that encourages students to learn independently and collaboratively with the purpose to address complicated issues in energy, resource, environmental, economy and policy areas under the globalization circumstance.

This course illuminates the role of dynamics in climate change and variability through presenting some major climate phenomena in the climate system. These phenomena include monsoons, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the Madden-Julian Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, thermohaline circulation, and global warming.