Introducing Natural Environments

• Credit value: 30 credit points at Level 4
• Convenor: to be confirmed
• Assessment: a 1500-word essay (50%) and two-hour seen examination (50%)

In this module we introduce you to geographical and environmental perspectives and issues that affect human livelihood throughout the world. Topics to be discussed will vary depending on current environmental events, but will include topics such as global climate change, coastal erosion, sea level rise, flooding, hurricanes and storm surge, energy at the coast, El Niño and the water crisis.

You will learn through lectures, group discussions and presentations, tutorials, writing reports and other short pieces of writing, videos, outside speakers and graphic presentations, in which the act of filtering and abstracting information is important.

The module includes a two-day residential fieldtrip, currently on the North Norfolk coast, with a strong focus on environmental data collection and interpretation delivered by a number of academic staff in the following themes:

• Coastal change, vulnerability and risk
• Coastal recovery from storm impacts
• Climate change and variability
• Aerial monitoring and remote sensing of environments
• Working and living in hazardous environments
• Managing environmental change

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• demonstrate an awareness of the variety and complexity of global environmental issues
• show how these are affected by interacting factors in both the natural and the human environment
• form an opinion as to the role of geographic science in suggesting solutions to environmental problems.