Geography and environmental science is concerned with the interactions between the physical and human world. The School of Geography and Environmental Science has an active research program that provides graduate students with research training and the foundations for engagement with government, NGO and private sector research and policy initiatives. This program is based on three broad academic strengths. The first explores the key factors associated with evolving patterns of urban and regional development at a range of scales (metropolitan to local community), activities (housing, farming, services), environments (urban and rural) and contexts (Australia and the Asia Pacific), utilising a variety of innovative methodologies. The second addresses short and long-term changes in climate, vegetation and the physical and the human landscape. The approaches adopted aim to explain the present-day environment and provide essential baseline data for realistic modelling and prediction of future change and its impacts. The third area is concerned with the socio- political structures shaping human interactions with the biosphere and explores the community governance of environmental and ecological change at local national and international scales.
Expertise within the school contributes to several research strengths identified by the faculty: environmental change and variability in Australia, Asia and the Pacific; social, political and cultural change in the Asia-Pacific region; and Australian urban and regional studies. Within these broad areas of research strength, supervision for PhD and masters candidates is available in the School of Geography and Environmental Science in the following specific areas: climatology, geomorphology, palynology, palaeoecology, geographic information systems, regional geography, development studies, urban geography, business and environmental sustainability, cultural geography, environmental planning and management. Staff in the school have consistently been the recipients of grants from external funding bodies such as the Australian Research Council, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, the Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Engineering and the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute.
See also http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/about/ and http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/ges/research/.
Students may study in any of the areas listed above for a PhD or a Master of Arts in Geography by 100 per cent research. See also the research masters degrees and Doctor of Philosophy entries in the Arts research section and http://www.monash.edu.au/phdschol/docprog/
A Master of Science may also be completed within the School of Geography and Environmental Science in some of the areas of listed above. See also the Faculty of Science section in this handbook.
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