Module GG4039: UNDERSTANDING ENVIRONEMENTAL CHANGE
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Module Co-ordinator: Dr Rocha (rochac@tcd.ie)
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This module examines present ecosystem function and its potential shift in response to anthropogenic and climate forcing. It covers the way in which life sustaining chemicals (Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen, Sulphur and Phosphorus) cycle through land, the atmosphere and the sea, conditioning ecosystem function and climate, and how humanity has interfered with this process. It focuses on the biogeochemical perspective of environmental change and provides a working knowledge of the main biogeochemical cycles, tracing their interactions and overlaps, evaluating their anthropic components, and describing how transfers and transformations within the cycles react to both internal and external forcing.
Learning Outcomes: On successful completion of this module students will be able to:
• Recognise in what way living systems control and/or are influenced by the chemistry of
the Earth;
• Make use of the concept of biogeochemical cycling in assessing actual problems
related to climate change;
• Identify and illustrate anthropogenic changes to the Earth system;
• Illustrate methodologies to study natural processes like the transfer of compounds
through ecosystems;
• Infer biogeochemical predictions of ecosystem response to climate change;
• Devise approaches to study environmental change;
• Appraise monitoring and research data in order to explain biogeochemical phenomena.
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Module Breakdown: Contact Hours (Lectures = 20hrs; Tutorials = 6 hrs; Practical = 12hrs); |
Recommended Texts:
Capone, Douglas G; Bronk, Deborah A; Mulholland, Margaret R and Carpenter, Edward J. 2008. Nitrogen in the Marine
Environment. 2nd Edition, Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Libes, S. M., 1992. An Introduction to Marine Biogeochemistry. John Wiley & Sons.
Michael Jacobson, Robert J. Charlson, Henning Rodhe and Gordon H. Orians, 2000. Earth System Science: From
Biogeochemical Cycles to Global Changes. International Geophysics Series, Volume 72, Academic Press.
Oldfield, Frank. 2005. Environmental Change: Key Issues and Alternative Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Schlesinger, William H. 1997. Biogeochemistry, an analysis of global change. 2nd edition, Academic Press Inc., Toronto.
Assessment: 50% Examination / 50% Course work