Geoscience in the Anthropocene 15 credits

About the course

This course deals with how humans have affected our environment, and the course builds on the processes and concepts discussed during courses like Soil science, Geomorphology and Limnology. We will address how human activities have affected both the physical landscape and the geochemical properties of air, soil and water, including how urban environments differ from non-urban environments. A focus will be to provide an understanding regarding how various human activities have affected the prospects of a sustainable society both in the past, today, and in the future.

The course is divided into the following two modules.

Module 1. theoretical module, 7,5 credits
Here we discuss how humans have affected different processes and factors in air, soil and water, and how this – in turn – have affected the physical shape, chemical properties and ecology of a landscape. An important aspect is how urban and non-urban landscapes differ from each other from a geoscience perspective.

Module 2. project module, 7,5 credits
During this module the students will conduct an own investigation regarding how humans have changed our environment, and how this in turn affect ecosystems and our own living conditions. An important aim of this module is to train the student’s ability to assess the importance of different forms of human activities, both in relation to each other and in relation to “natural” processes.