Earth Systems Science is one of the first courses of the LUMES programme. The course focuses on the physical, chemical, and biological aspects of the global Earth systems and how they relate to sustainability challenges and intersections with society.
Today’s assignments included practicing biodiversity inventories and how to identify different tree species, as well as sampling to measure the PH of different types of waters, and to map landcover changes.
- In the course we are looking at processes like the biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, geosphere, and human-nature interactions, and how they are all interconnected, says Torsten Krause, coordinator of the course.
- The aim of the course is to understand how things around us are connected, both to society and to each other, and for the students to obtain a system dynamics perspective.
LUMES student Andrea Stevens from Canada thinks that it is nice to put the methods that they have learned in lectures into practice.
- This is new for me, so I’ve learnt a lot.
Jakob Wondra from Germany agrees.
- It’s amazing to meet in person and be outside on the nicest day. It’s also so nice to get to do some hands-on work, as we sit in front of the computer quite a lot.
Andrea’s impression of the programme is that everyone is very friendly, and that she’d learnt a lot in a short amount of time.
- It’s nice to learn from different people during the lectures and there is a lot of variety in what we are learning. It is also interesting hearing about everyone else’s backgrounds, what they did for their bachelors or work previously. It’s exciting to get to learn from them as well.
Nicola Perfitt from Sweden also feel that the mix of different academic and cultural backgrounds adds something extra to the programme.
- It’s so fun that everyone has such different backgrounds, both academic and cultural. So far everyone has just been lovely.
- There are so many different backgrounds, and they all get together and bring their viewpoints, so there are very fruitful discussions already. It’s great on a content level, and on a social level as well, adds Jakob.
