Why study River Environmental Management MSc at Birmingham?
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 Environmental 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:
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Total Organic Carbon analysis
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Gas Chromatography
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Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry
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Ion Chromatography
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Luminescence and UV-visible spectroscopy
These facilities are complemented by Sediment Preparation Laboratories for material analysis including thin section prep, sediment extractions, pore size and surface area measurement and electron microscopy techniques.
The School’s Stable Isotope Laboratories are equipped for d18O, dD, d34S, d15N, d13C extracted from solid, aqueous and biological samples. For ecological work there are dedicated wet and dry microscope laboratories for sorting and identifying samples with a dedicated paleoecological laboratory for sample treatment and analysis. The Microbiological Laboratory is equipped for handling, incubation and sampling of bacterial cultures and sophisticated micro-analysis.
These facilities are available for your regular use, where you will benefit from working alongside Doctoral and Postdoctoral Research Fellows, and often contribute to major research projects within the School.
Field Facilities
The School has a field sites on campus for use by MSc students and the research staff. This is the Bournbrook which flows through campus but is instrumented for continual measurement of discharge, turbidity, water temperature and conductivity. A number of student projects and teaching are related to this facility.
Field Equipment
The Hydroecology 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).
Workshop
Fieldwork is supported by a well-equipped technical workshop.
Technical Support
We have a dedicated technician for support of projects related to the Masters in River Environmental Management.
Teaching and Learning
Fieldwork
There is a variety of field work and assessments associated with the MSc River Environmental Management which provide you with hands-on experience in a number of different fields.
The first week of the degree programme is spent on a field course associated with the module River Assessment and Biomonitoring, held at the Freshwater Biological Association laboratories near Wareham in Dorset. You are instructed in the use of electrofishing to capture and identify fish in a chalk river, and how to collect data to age the fish and determine their growth condition. There is a section related to macrophyte identification and their application in biomonitoring approaches. You are also instructed in methods to collect river macroinvertebrates. The effect of mesohabitats and anvironmental filters on macroinvertebrate community structure is analysed. Accommodation and refreshment are provided by the Countryman Inn which is a great place to meet and interact with others on the programme before formal lectures start.
There are also a number of day-long field trips connected with a variety of modules. For Hydrology and Biogeochemical Cycling there is an overnight field visit to Shropshire.
The River Restoration module has a weekend field trip to the Peak District to examine and evaluate various approaches to restoration and to provides in-depth insights into this rapidly growing field.
The dissertation offers an opportunity for extensive fieldwork, often overseas, and projects have taken place in Alaska, Lapland, the French Pyrenees as well as the UK.
Employability
The course is of considerable value if you wish to pursue a career in the river environmental management field or the water industry. It also provides advanced level training if you wish progress on to a PhD.
Currently, due to the large national demand for Water Managers, we have a 100% employment success rate for all our home/EU students, with graduates obtaining employment in the consultancy sector, typically with jobs secured before graduation. Additionally, Environmental Scientists who have spent some time in a branch of the water industry often feel the need for a postgraduate course to give them an overall understanding of their profession. The River Environmental Management programme is so structured as to satisfy the requirements of both of these groups of potential students, the latter includes many International students who choose to retrain here in Birmingham.
The programme is of an intensive nature and is intended to develop your ability for original thought and to produce innovative solutions to practical problems. The integrated approach to the water cycle with a river environmental management emphasis is of particular importance in achieving the aim of giving you the ability to attain senior management positions in water authorities and companies, environmental consultants and regulators, government departments, consultants and contractors.
Find out how this programme has proved beneficial to other students by reading our graduate profiles.
On graduating from this course you could typically expect to find employment with organisations such as those listed below:
Birmingham City Council, The Environment Agency, W. S. Atkins Consultant Engineers, OFWAT, North West Water Ltd, Severn Trent Water Ltd, Northumbrian Lyonnaise Technology and Research Centre, CES, The Institute of Hydrology, HR Wallingford, Haswell Consulting Engineers, Halcrow (UK), Bechtel Water, South Staffordshire Water Company, Hyder Consulting, Anglian Water Services, Water Management Consultants, Posford Duvivier, Jeremy Benn Associates, Southern Water, Thames Water, Peter Brett Associates, Montgomery Watson, Mott Macdonald, Royal Haskoning, Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Sir Alexander Gibb and Ptnrs Ltd, and Yorkshire Water.