Land use and environmental modelling

The aim of the course is to give the students a fundamental understanding of the effects of different land uses on element cycling, element balances and element losses from terrestrial ecosystems. The students will achieve skills in using element balances, simple empirical models and more complex modelling tools to quantify impacts on the environment at different scales. The competences achieved are essential for work related to environmental analysis, assessment, management and research on issues related to various land uses and land use changes.

Knowledge
· Summarize land use impacts (agriculture, forestry) on environmental problems.
· Describe C, N and P cycling under agricultural and forest land uses as well as the mutual interactions of these cycles in wetland soils.
· Reflect on the variability of soil characteristics (including on the practical problems of soil mapping) and their influence on water and element fluxes.

Skills
· Use element (and water) balances to estimate environmental impacts and/or benefits at different scales.
· Use models to calculate element balances and environmental loads for case areas.
· Understand and relate critically to results generated by environmental models.
· Communicate knowledge on environmental problems related to land use.

Competences
· Evaluate components in element balances as well as water balances and how these components are influenced by land use.
· Predict potential environmental impact from various land uses and from land use change.
· Discuss problems related to scaling and to obtaining reliable data.