UH 066 449 Master programme Environmental Sciences - Soil, Water, Biodiversity (ENVEURO)

EnvEuro is an international two year MSc programme in Environmental Science (120 ECTS), which includes studies at two of the four partner universities. EnvEuro takes you from the European environmental lessons learned, through practices and challenges to future environmental technologies and solutions, which are needed for a sustainable use of natural resources.

Focus is on the interactions between land use and the environment, with the aqueous phase placed at the core of the programme. Water quality is to a large extent determined by the composition, properties, management and pollutant loads of soils and of the atmosphere, and water is the main carrier of pollutants in the terrestrial environment and connects to the atmospheric environment, the aquatic environments and to the biosphere as plants and micro organisms take up nutrients and substrates through the aqueous phase. Ecosystem stability and animal and human health is strongly affected through the quality of water in streams, lakes, marine waters and groundwater and indirectly via the feed and food, the quality of which depends on the inherent quality of soil and irrigation waters. This creates a tight link between land use and water quality with focus on soil quality.

Hence, the quality of the aqueous environment can be used as a collective measure of terrestrial environmental quality, an approach, which is most clearly adopted in the European Water Framework Directive as well as other EU directives. The comprehensive and coordinated environmental framework programs that have been implemented all over Europe are backed up by intensive and common monitoring programs, legislation, regulation, management and policy practices which are here seen as a strong advantage and a solid background for the MSc programme.

The MSc programme aims at providing candidates who can work professionally with soil, water and biodiversity in an environmental context and related to the use of natural resources, and based on insight in European ecosystems and knowledge on current European environmental management. The program offers different possibilities for specialisation and hence should be attractive for both students interested in management and policy, and students inclined to a strict natural science approach focusing on process and system functioning, process dynamics, monitoring and modelling. However, all students will start up with a common introduction to European environmental practises including legislation, regulation, monitoring/data collection and policy.

Compared to a national MSc program a joint European master in environmental science will be able to bring a broader range of complementary expertises together ensuring high educational quality in a multi-cultural, -economic and -political environment. This can help disseminate intercultural understanding and break down barriers in future European cooperation.

The MSc is offered by four partner universities. The four current partner universities comprise:

• LIFE - University of Copenhagen, faculty of Life Sciences, Denmark
• UHOH - University of Hohenheim, Germany
• SLU - Swedish University of Agricultural Science, Sweden
• BOKU - University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Science Vienna, Austria

The full program has an extent of 120 ECTS and the program is constructed by 4 semester packages each with a work load of 30 ECTS (basic semester package/BSP, two advanced semester packages/ASPs and a thesis). During the MSc program all students will be studying at two different partner universities as a rule, and at least one ASP (30 ECTS) has to be followed outside the home university. The thesis work has to be assigned to one of the universities where an ASP has been taken. When the student signs in for the MSc program, the student will be registered at the university chosen to start at, here called the home university. When the student leaves for another university to study for a semester or full year, he/she will be registered also at this second university, which is called the host university.

This study program is only taught in englisch.