The course of Geoclimatology and Environment aims at providing PhD students with the advanced theoretical and practical knowledge in the fields of Geology and Environment and their mutual interactions. The course is divided into three modules: Paleoclimatology, Modelling, and Environment.

Environmental science is indissolubly integrated with the Geological and the Natural Sciences and is an interdisciplinary field that brings together ecology, geology, meteorology, biology, chemistry, engineering. It integrates different scientific methodological approaches to unravel and tackle world environmental challenges.

The present module - Environment - therefore aims to:

1) introduce the main environmental issues affecting marine ecosystems;

2) provide basic knowledge on the application of bioindicators (e.g., benthic foraminifera) to assess the quality of the environment and how it changes over time;

3) present methodologies and protocols for biomonitoring the environmental quality in marine and transitional marine waters and to the environmental biomonitoring.

Introduction to Marine Environments, Pollution and Bioindicators (1 hour)

Biomonitoring (2 hours)

Protocol for biomonitoring (1 hour)

Application of metabarcoding to environmental biomonitoring (1 hour)

Ecotoxicology (1 hour)

Biotic indices and Ecological Quality Status (1 hour)

Ecological indices calculation (0.5 h)

Topic presentation (0.5 h)

The teaching material prepared by the lecturer in addition to recommended textbooks (such as for instance slides, lecture notes, exercises, bibliography) and communications from the lecturer specific to the course can be found inside the Moodle platform › blended.uniurb.it

Supporting teaching activities and ongoing assessment are not foreseen. At the end of each topic, self-assessment activities will be carried out (structured tests with answer key) to allow students to evaluate their level of understanding and preparation of the topics.

Teaching

The course includes:

- frontal lectures

- preparation of a presentation on the applications of bioindicators in environmental biomonitoring;

- use of statistical software for diversity indices calculation

Innovative teaching methods

The face-to-face teaching method will be enriched with individual and group exercises and insights that students will carry out using the University's Moodle platform.

Some topics of the course will be treated following the practices of the "flipped lesson" and Problem-Based Learning (e.g. Ecological Quality Status evaluation).

Assessment

The assessment consists of an oral exam with three open questions including comments on graphs and figures and takes in account the PhD student presentation.

Disability and Specific Learning Disorders (SLD)

Students who have registered their disability certification or SLD certification with the Inclusion and Right to Study Office can request to use conceptual maps (for keywords) during exams.

To this end, it is necessary to send the maps, two weeks before the exam date, to the course instructor, who will verify their compliance with the university guidelines and may request modifications.