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After completion of the course the student:
- has insight in primary drivers of land use change and the consequences for physical/chemical processes in soil, water and atmosphere, and hence global change processes, such as climate change, environmental pollution, enrichment, acidification and fragmentation;
- has insight in how global change influences the quality and functioning of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and the composition, structure and stability of biological communities and biological diversity;
- has insight in strategies that aim to counteract adverse environmental effects and create restoration and conservation of ecological and biological values;
- has insight in recent development in scientific research concerning global change and ecosystems;
- can analyse the interrelationships between land use, environmental quality and biodiversity;
- can define research questions and hypotheses on the basis of scientific literature and in how research programs should be organized in order to answer the raised questions and test the proposed hypotheses;
- can provide scientific reports in the form of a paper, an oral contribution, a poster and as a co-referent.
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The primary drivers of land use change are demographic, economic and social pressures related to human activity. Area distributions designated to urbanization, agriculture and nature will have consequences for processes in soil, water and atmosphere, and hence on environmental processes like climate change, pollution, acidification, enrichment and fragmentation. These environmental factors determine in important ways the functioning of many aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, in terms of quality (levels of contamination, richness) and functioning (cycling of materials, energy and nutrients). Such environmental effects currently cause adverse effects on and deterioration of life-support functions and productivity in ecosystems, as well they are thought to cause declines in biological diversity on various scales (regional-global) and levels of ecological organisation (species, ecosystems, landscapes). The course will especially pay attention to strategies how to solve these questions and problems and how to develop, adopt and apply strategies that counteract adverse environmental effects leading to sustainable restoration and conservation of the quality and functioning of ecological and biological systems.
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