This paper examines how core concepts in the multidisciplinary field of biogeochemistry provide a systems understanding across scales.

This paper is designed to provide umbrella coverage of seminal concepts in environmental science at a postgraduate level. Understanding of these concepts allows students with Bachelors degrees in Earth Sciences, Biology or Chemistry to feel confident in overall understanding of Environmental Science as a discipline. Coverage is designed to interface with other 500 level offerings in ENVSC and related disciplines. Topics include the ecosystem concept as applied to mass and energy, and scales from microbial to global. Also included is the role of different methods: science has different ways of investigating problems that are tractable with experiments (in field such as ecology or physiology) versus larger scales where historical and systems sciences (such as the earth sciences) debate and test ideas. Focus will be placed on exchange processes, interfaces, and dynamic systems required for application to environmental decision-making.

This paper provides understanding of system science and scaling concepts that build on 300-level curriculum from other sciences, and will couple to other 500-level offers with limited but useful overlap that allows students to learn from each other in the seminar. For the latter, specific examples include ENVSC503 Greenhouse Gas Fluxes from Land, BIOEB505 Coastal and Estuarine Ecology, BIOEB506 Environmental Physiology, ENVSC501 Evaluation of Environmental Change, and BIOEB504 Freshwater Ecology.

This is a seminar course where student-led discussion and presentations will be guided by introductory or short lectures. Students will make oral presentations of peer-reviewed literature either provided in class or that they have found. Learning will be re-enforced through a project requiring analysis and submission of an explanatory report.

There will be one two-hour class session every week, to be held online over Zoom.