The human-induced emissions of pollutants has severe impact on biodiversity, ecosystems and economy. This course aims to investigate and understand the pollutants cycle and its interaction with different environmental compartment namely hydrosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere and bioshpere . The course will be organised into four themes, each treating a different aspect of pollutants and explain how it is transport and transform within and accross different Earth's compartments. Students are expected to participate actively in the course, which includes the critical incident analysis and evaluation of the pertinent literature.
This course covers the introduction in research method which involving environmental research, including research design, data collection, data analysis and data presentation
Environmental problems and global environmental change are complex and transboundary that need to be dealt with at all administrative levels and with an integrated method for the policymaking and implementation to be reconciled with human liberty and economic aspirations. This course considers these issues and provides a tour through existing legal regimes governing pollution, water law, endangered species, toxic substances, environmental impact analyses, and environmental risk in Malaysia.
The course is an introduction to statistical
methods and data analysis with emphasis on applications for environmental
studies. The course covers methods for designing experiments,
pre-processing, and modeling measured data to extract useful information from possibly
large data sets and use this for supporting decisions. Students will learn the
following statistical themes: graphic
descriptions and visualization of the dataset, correlation, and regression pre-processing (normalization,
auto-scaling, convolution, etc), classification testing (principal component
analysis, cluster analysis ), and validation
of models (use of test sets, cross-validation).
The course provides basic knowledge on modelling, especially in concept, process and application of the models in the environmental research. These models are quantitative tools for describing, understanding, and predicting the way pollutants interact with the environment. The course is important to enable the students apply the water quality models that emphasize on pollutant transport in the natural and anthropogenic contexts.
This course covers harmful chemicals in the environment and in our bodies and how they impact our health. It addresses characteristics of chemicals, particularly related to how they get into our bodies (exposures), what they do when they get there (toxicology), how we measure them and their impact on the environment as well as public health. The students will learn the chemical exposure pathways, their toxicology impacts on human health and methodology of risk assessment against this harmful chemicals.
Environmental Management System (EMS) and Occupational Health and Safety System (OHS) are two different set of processes and practices that enable an organization to reduce its environmental impacts, continuously identify hazards, control risks in workplace and increase overall organization operating efficiency. In this course student will learn the clauses mentioned in ISO14001, ISO45001 ,OHSAS 18001 and how these standard works. Students also learned the PDCA approach, ISO auditing assessment process and the potential benefits of standards to uphold an organization's responsibility in economy, social, and environment. This course required students to engage in group discussions and assignments in which they have the opportunity to dialogue with industry practitioners to assess organisation key activities related to EMS and OHS.
Isotope and organic molecular markers sources are powerful tools that allow gaining a better understanding of a large range of environmental processes. This course will provide a general overview about common applications and the use of environmental tracers in the environmental studies. Students learn the basic facts and applications about the stable isotopes (d15N, d13C, d2H, d18O), radionuclides (e.g. 14C) and organic molecular markers (fatty acid, and other groups) in environmental forensic studies. They gain insights into the different detection techniques of these tracers and learn how to compute source apportionment mixing model using environmental tracers as model input . A selection of the numerous applications of the different environmental tracers in environmental as well as ecological processes will be studied.