Program Overview

Our River Environments and their Management MSc is taught by a team of internationally leading water scientists at the University of Birmingham and developed with input from the water industry. To link the theory to the outside world, excursions and fieldwork are a crucial part of many of our modules.

This course will examine the interactions between climate, hydrology, geomorphology, ecology, biogeochemical cycling, water and habitat quality and biodiversity.

Using a combination of lectures, fieldwork, tutorials, laboratory classes, group projects and an individual research-based thesis, you will be provided with the necessary training and skills for a career in the successful environmental management of rivers.

River systems are under ever increasing pressure through the growing demands of water abstraction and hydroelectric power generation, and suffer recurrent disturbance through diffuse and point source pollutants, drought, flooding and channel modification.

Why study this course?
The School is well supported and you will have the use of equipment and facilities appropriate to your work:

Computing

You will have access to the multiple clusters of PCs in the University Learning Centre and Library, and within the School. The MSc course in River Environments and their Management has its own dedicated room for teaching and study with 8 PCs for convenient access to email, web and on-line learning resources. The University based computers have an extensive range of software installed that covers the needs of students of all disciplines, including a variety of statistical packages for data analysis.

Laboratories

The School has specialized laboratories equipped for analysis of organic and inorganic environmental samples, as well as supporting experimental research. Within the Water Sciences and Freshwater Research Laboratories our analytical suite covers aqueous chemistry, from the major nutrients to organic pollutants and toxic heavy metals. Facilities include:

• Total Organic Carbon analysis
• Gas Chromatography
• Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry
• Ion Chromatography
• Luminescence and UV-visible spectroscopy

Field Equipment

The Water Sciences Research Group is well stocked with field equipment, which is used extensively in research projects, for teaching, and particularly on individual MSc projects. This equipment includes digital pressure transducers, data loggers, divers, dip meters, chemical sampling and tracer transport equipment (depth samplers, sampling pumps, tracer test equipment and field fluorimeter, hand held EC, pH and Eh meters, portable chemical lab kit) and ecological sampling (nets, trays, electro-fishing).