Undergraduate Environmental Sciences 2025-2026

Field based course that takes you across northeast Scotland exploring an ancient tropical rainforest, hill farming in action, survey techniques and soil formation.

Lectures focus on how soils form, how soils work, soil classification, soil as part of the environment, human impacts on soil, and the use of mapping and soil data to optimise the management of this fragile resource.

Your assessments are geared towards developing practical skills. This includes a presentation on a particular soil that requires research akin to detective work, quizzes on soil properties and classification and a critical essay on a selected topic.

This course examines the role terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems play in modulating global fluxes of energy and matter. It explores physical, chemical, and biological processes that govern ecosystem dynamics.

This course develops principles of systems ecology and biogeochemistry, focusing on organisms’ roles in regulating ecosystem processes and interactions of greenhouse gas exchange between the atmosphere, ocean, and land surface.

By integrating insights from various disciplines, you gain understanding of how ecosystems differ in composition, structure, and function.

This course is a residential field course that takes place in the Cairngorm National Park. During this course you will gain experience relating to the broad theme of environmental science and management.

You will develop a greater understanding of the dynamics of the landscape and the interactions and conflicts between stakeholders. You will be focusing on issues associated with different land uses within the Cairngorms National Park and associated decisions which directly impact the environment. This will be done by a number of site visits to sporting estates, forests, farms, and national nature reserves.

Dates for this field course are 23rd March – 27th March 2026.

The mixture of applied science and theoretical work on this course places you in a valuable position for understanding the procedures and applications in modern environmental science.

A number of laboratory classes allows you to familiarise yourself with the current analytical instrumentation in environmental science.

The course uses examples of environmental issues allowing you to understand the problem, how the analysis was conducted and the implications of the results. The main assessment in this course is a practical write up that is written in the style of a scientific report giving you an opportunity to perfect this style of writing.

This highly interactive course explores the principles and practice of contaminated land assessment and remediation. It provides broad knowledge of underlying science, as well as practical skills related to the assessment of contamination sources, pathways and risks to human health. While the lectures introduce theoretical background and gradually build the expertise, the practical have been based on various assessment tools and develop practical knowledge and quantitative skills. The learning activities replicate tasks that one would encounter in environmental consultancy and provide valuable transferrable skills.

Capstone course where you apply your disciplinary knowledge to the policy-driven approaches for informing development (e.g., environmental impact assessment, nature valuation, biodiversity net gain).

Case studies from marine, terrestrial and freshwater systems provide context for considering ecological, economic and social issues associated with biodiversity restoration.

Discussions and assessments enhance your capacity for attentive exchange and informed argument, reinforcing your understanding of linkages between theory and practice.