The school's research and teaching program adopts an integrative approach for understanding and doing global, regional, and urban sustainability. It can be divided into four main thematic groups that span the traditional disciplinary divides of physical geography, human geography, and environmental management and incorporate analytical techniques such as geographic information systems:
- Social change and development - investigates the ways in which human communities occupy, use and modify spaces and places, with particular attention to questions of urbanisation, international development, and social justice.
- Conservation of biological and cultural diversity - based in biogeography, palaeoecology, and archaeology, this stream investigates the distribution and character of the Earth's vegetation and the archaeology of indigenous peoples.
- Climate change - investigates the functioning of the climate and atmosphere in the past, present, and future through approaches from earth systems science through to environmental policy.
- Land and water resources management - draws from both scientific investigations in geomorphology, hydrology, and biogeography, and social science approaches to environmental and resource management.
Many geography units offer opportunities for field studies in different landscapes. These include day or weekend trips to study cities, coasts, alpine areas, soils, hydrology, climatology and meteorology, Australian Indigenous archaeology, tourism and environmental management. More extensive and lengthy excursions are also available, in particular on the themes of indigenous archaeology and regional sustainability (to regional Australia, South Africa and Italy). Basic laboratory techniques are also taught in selected physical geography and archaeology units.
Those proceeding into honours have the further opportunity to consolidate their understanding of an area (or areas) of specialisation, while pursuing a research topic under expert supervision.
Clayton
First-year level
Students studying a sequence in geography and environmental science must complete two units (12 points) from the following, including the core unit
Core
- GES1070 Natural hazards and human vulnerability
Elective
- GES1020 Australian physical environments: Evolution, status and management
- GES1050 The global challenge
Second/Third-year level
Students studying a minor or major in geography and environmental science must have completed the first-year sequence. In addition:
- a minor requires completion of a further two units (12 points) from the units listed below
- a major requires completion of a further six units (36 points) from the units listed below. A minimum of three units must be taken at third year level.
Available units include:
- GES2060/GES3060 Archaeology of indigenous Australia
- GES2080/GES3080 Archaeological field and laboratory method
- GES2130 Soils, land use and the environment
- GES2170 Biogeography - the status of Australian vegetation
- GES2190 Climatology: Surface-atmosphere processes and interactions
- GES2210/GES3210 Environmental hydrology
- GES2340/GES3340 Cities and sustainability
- GES2460 Environmental policy and management
- GES2660 Power and poverty: Geographies of an uneven development
- GES2760 Place and the politics of identity
- GES2860 Climate change and variability (previously GES3860 Climate change and variability)
- GES2910 Fundamentals of geographical information science
- GES3050 Field studies in urban sustainability
- GES3070 Remote sensing of the environment
- GES3210 Environmental hydrology
- GES3250 Environmental assessment and decision making
- GES3270 Research project in geography and environmental science
- GES3350 Resource evaluation and management
- GES3360 Soils, landscape and their management
- GES3370 Urban climate, water and sustainability (previously 'Applied environmental climatology')
- GES3420 Researching human environments
- GES3470 Urbanisation and regional development in the Indo-Pacific rims
- GES3555 Environmental change: Past to future
- GES3810 Geographical information systems (GIS) for environmental management
- INT2065/INT3065 International development in a globalising world
Units not offered in 2010
- GES2160 Coastal geomorphology and management
- GES2320 Tourism and the environment
- GES2750 Economic spaces and industrial landscapes
- GES3220 Tourism and the environment
- GES3240 Cities and sustainability
- GES3260 Cultural landscape, environment and sustainability (field study unit in Italy)
- GES3330 Field studies in regional sustainability (field study unit in South Africa)
- GES3520 Social space: Urban justice
- GES3530 Landscape processes (field-based unit in outback Australia)
- GES3540 Out of Africa: Human evolution, world heritage and museums
- GES3550 Quaternary environments
- GES3610 Geographical information systems for business and social science applications
- GES3750 Sharing prosperity: Geographies of work, regional development and economy
- GES3820 Geographical information systems (GIS) for environmental management
- GES3850 The Australian atmospheric environment - a synoptic-scale approach
- GES3890 Earth system interactions: From biogeochemical cycles to global change
South Africa
First-year level
Students studying a sequence in geography and environmental science must complete two units (12 points) from the following:
- GES1003 Introduction to human geography
- GES1030 Introduction to physical geography
Second/Third-year level
Students studying a minor or major in geography and environmental science must have completed the first-year sequence. In addition:
- a minor requires completion of a further two units (12 points) from the units listed below
- a major requires completion of a further six units (36 points) from the units listed below. A minimum of three units must be taken at third year level.
Available units include:
Units not offered in 2010
