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Global Environmental Change (003GS)

30 credits, Level 6

Spring teaching

Environmental change has become a central global issue with serious implications for the social and natural world. There is a need to monitor the earth's signs of change, especially where ground information is spatially limited, filled with error, or unavailable. Remote sensing datasets are vital in monitoring local, regional and global changes.

In this module, you'll use remote-sensing datasets to answer fundamental questions about our changing planet. This will involve:

• assessing and monitoring changes in our atmosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere
• understanding the nature of remote sensing
• gaining practical knowledge in using and manipulating big datasets
• linking environmental change to sustainability and policy.

We'll focus on four components of the geosphere:

• Remote Sensing of the atmosphere monitors weather, detects greenhouse gas and pollution
• Remote sensing of the cryosphere helps in determining the presence, absence and change of ice cover over the earth's surface
• Remote sensing of the hydrosphere monitors the oceans, organic and inorganic ocean constituents, sea surface temperatures, el nino events, land water fluxes, and flooding events
• Remote Sensing of the biosphere monitors the component of the earth that supports life, and is sensitive to changes in climate. This includes:
• vegetation structure
• composition
• land cover types
• soil moisture
• leaf chemical components
• phenology
• change detection
• plant stress and photosynthesis
• transpiration
• surface temperatures.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 300 hours of work. This breaks down into about 38 hours of contact time and about 262 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2024/25. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.