Obligatory introductory courses (30 ECTS)

During the first semester you will follow 6 obligatory courses with the purpose to provide you with an essential toolbox within environmental science. The introductory courses are designed in such a way that they are fully multi-disciplinary and will provide the students with a broad understanding on the concept of risk in various environmental disciplines. 

The obligatory courses (5 ECTS each):

• Principles of environmental risk assessment
  Ecosystems, ecosystems service and management, ecotoxicology, water resources, natural hazards, economics of environmental issues.
  
  
• Environmental regulation and history
  Environmental regulation and policy, environmental history, environmental economics and political processes.
  
  
• Introduction to Natural hazards
  Earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, flooding and climate change, risk assessment and mitigation strategies for society and the environment.
  
  
• Principles of environmental risk management
  Human impact, regulatory strategies: command, control, governance and voluntary agreements.
  
  
• Introduction to quantitative methods in environmental risk assessment
  Environmental statistics, statistical design considerations in monitoring risk, environmental modelling.
  
  
• Spatial analysis
  Geographical information systems, remote sensing, spatial dynamics, digital databases.
  
  

Profiling courses (30 ECTS)

You may specialize within a wide range of courses linking up to the field of environmental risk assessment. For example, you may focus on acquiring skills for environmental protection and management of chemicals and associated environmental impacts. Or you may focus on the management of water / food resources which is one of the key issues in many parts of the world where drought or flooding causes major problems which are expected to get worse as a result of climate change. Other environmental problems arising from the impacts of human or natural activities on ecological systems may also be investigated, for instance by modeling changes in habitats and nutrient transport.

Each semester a number of profiling courses are offered. The variation of courses may differ each semester. You choose your profiling courses in an agreement with your supervisor. An example of courses that may be offered  as profiling in the program is:

• Applied ecology
• Estuarine & coastal ecology and human impacts
• Energy and Element Cycling
• Ecotoxicology – Principles and practice (incl. tools used by EPA)
• Drainage basins: processes, modeling and management
• Global change
• Climate and resources
• Environment and Economics
• Management of water, oil and natural gas resources
• Energy planning
• Europe in the modern world
• Environmental historyAir pollution – science and management
• Water resources and habitat modeling
• Urban Ecology
• Natural resource economics
• Integrated environmental-economic models
• Introduction to methods in history
• Volcanoes and society: risks and benefits

Master’s thesis (60 ECTS)

Since this program focuses on providing you with  practical and experimental skills, it will be required, that you produce a thesis based on experimental work. The thesis should be interdisciplinary and as such incorporate at least  two scientific disciplines represented in the program, and be 60 ECTS. You will be offered a joint structured introduction to the thesis project which will provide you with the optimum framework for identifying the multi-disciplinary environmental issue you would like to work with and provide you with tools to help manage your process of thesis writing. This process will be initiated already during the 2nd semester of the program allowing you to mature along with your thesis project.

The program will further provide you with project management skills during your thesis writing. Furthermore, you will be encouraged to perform your project in collaboration with an external partner/organization (e.g., EPA, EEA) to get real world experience. To ensure that the thesis progress satisfactory you will be asked to deliver a synopsis including an overall introduction to their thesis as well as the problem formulation or hypothesis to be tested and a time plan for the project. A mid-term evaluation will, in addition, serve as a quality check of the thesis.