About the Programme
While the overall character of your degree program will vary with your choice of electives, all students will gain an overall knowledge on the theory and practice of Ecosystem Services, including:
- An understanding of key ecological principles underlying Ecosystem Services, and, processes, functionality and dynamics of ecosystems across a range of different biomes and scales;
- An appreciation of the diverse services that ecosystems provide to society, e.g. food, coastal protection, carbon capture, water security, through to aesthetic or cultural traditions;
- An ability to measure and communicate the values of ecosystem services through a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods and models;
- A detailed understanding of ecosystem services through specific courses on forests, fresh water and marine systems and specific areas such as ethics, economics, resource management and GIS. Examples may include: coursework in forestry, coastal marine, water, economics, environmental governance, and/or social and cultural traditions; and
- The ability to undertake multi-disciplinary research, both independently and as part of a team and team-based project management.
In addition, there is an emphasis on developing skills and experience that will be of use outside of academia. For instance, assessments are designed with a real world context, developing your skills in writing clearly and concisely for a range of non-academic audiences (e.g. policy briefings, executive summaries) Your skills in analysing real data sets and specific areas will be developed through extensive real-world data collection and analysis activities. Throughout the programme you will practice skills that are in high demand from employers in environmental sectors, such as data collection and analysis, computer modeling, fieldwork and interdisciplinary analysis.
Why study Ecosystem Services?
Thinking about ecosystems in terms of how the contribute to human welfare is a concept that is gaining ground. Policy makers and businesses are used to making decisions based on estimates of costs, benefits and risks, but often environmental issues are not thought of in this way. Instead we often appeal to our instinct that nature is important and valuable in its own right. Although this approach has a lot of emotional punch, it hasn’t proved to be a great way of balancing the monetary gains associated with degrading or destroying ecosystems against the loss of the services they provide.
Ecosystem Services provide a lens through which this trade off can be evaluated, by bringing together ecosystem science with the social sciences and economics. The science needed to make this possible is only just starting to become available, and many cutting edge research questions relate to the underpinnings and valuation of ecosystem services. There is a lot we don’t understand about how ecosystems function, and of course even more we don’t know about their future behaviour. This makes it hard to link ecosystems to human well being, but is not impossible.
Background - Since 2005
Recent advances have shown how influential the ecosystem services approach can be. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment has promoted a lot of activity in terms of including ecosystem services in economic decision. For instance, the Stern report into the economics of climate change sharply altered the debate on how to respond to climate change. The recent TEEB study, initiated at the behest of the G8, has done a similar thing for our understanding of the value of biodiversity. The UK has just completed its own valuation of all our ecosystem services. The kind of policy-relevant conclusion that have real influence in government include:
- The benefits that inland wetlands bring to water quality are worth up to £1.5 billion per year to the UK
- Pollinators are worth £430 million per year to British agriculture
- The health benefits of living with a view of a green space are worth up to £300 per person per year.
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This MSc programme will give you the skills to take what we do know about ecosystem functioning and use this to understand how ecosystems support human well-being. This programme first develops your understanding of ecosystem function and dynamics, involving ecology, biology, biogeochemistry and systems analysis (semester 1) and then looks at ecosystems from a human perspective: monetary and non-monetary valuation tools are explored and the contributions of economics, sociology and psychology are used to understand the strengths and weaknesses of ecosystem valuation.
Teaching and Assessment
MSc teaching is executed through a range of teaching and assessment modes all of which are designed to prepare the student the for the master's dissertation and employment outside of academia.
Teaching modes vary with courses but may include:
- Formal lectures on targeted topics and case studies from around the world
- Informal lectures with questions and group discussion
- Reading lists from key peer-reviewed social and natural science literature
- Practical classes including computer and decision tree modelling on some courses
- Verbal feedback on previous practical work
- A chance to question lecturers on their expert topics
Assessment modes vary with courses but may include:
- Short written responses and reviews of key readings and literature
- Formal essays demonstrating critical thinking and analytic of complex topics;
- Essay based exams on key content of courses
- Group and individual visual and verbal presentations on case study topics
- Group and individual poster session materials on case study topics
This article was published on Mar 11, 2013