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:
- Urban, regional and international development - investigates the changing relationships between the city and countryside, urban growth and change, industrialisation and rural development with particular attention to questions of, uneven development, regional inequality, and social justice.
- Conservation of biological diversity and cultural heritage focuses on the distribution and character of the earth's vegetation, distinctive ecological, cultural, and indigenous landscapes shaped by human action.
- Climate change and society investigates the functioning of the climate and atmosphere in the past, present, and future through a range of disciplinary approaches from earth systems science through to environmental policy.
- Land and water management draws from scientific investigations in geomorphology, hydrology, and biogeography, as well as 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.
Clayton
First-year level
Students studying a first year sequence in geography and environmental science must complete two units (12 points), including the compulsory unit, from the following:
Compulsory unit
- ATS1310 Natural hazards and human vulnerability
Elective units
- ATS1301 Australian physical environments: Evolution, status and management
- ATS1309 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 including the compulsory unit. A minimum of three units must be taken at third year level.
Compulsory unit
NOTE: This unit it not compulsory for students who commenced study in their course prior to 2011.
Elective units
- ATS2543/ATS3543 Archaeology of indigenous Australia
- ATS2544/ATS3544 Archaeological field and laboratory method
- ATS2545/ATS3545 Environmental hydrology
- ATS2547 Cities and sustainability
- ATS2548 Environmental policy and management
- ATS2628 Power and poverty: International development in a globalising world
- ATS2774 Understanding Australian landscapes: soil-vegetation dynamics
- ATS2776 Climatology: Land, ecosystems and the atmosphere
- ATS2778 People and places: Social geographies of exclusion
- ATS2779 Climate change and variability
- ATS2889/ATS3889 Indigenous knowledges in cross-cultural praxis: Aboriginal community field unit
- ATS3259 Geographical information systems (GIS) for environmental management
- ATS3281 Cultural landscape, environment and sustainability (field study unit in Italy)
- ATS3283 Sharing prosperity: Geographies of work, regional development and economy
- ATS3552 Remote sensing of the environment
- ATS3545 Environmental hydrology
- ATS3546 Environmental assessment and decision making
- ATS3553 Field studies in regional sustainability (field study unit in South Africa)
- ATS3554 Resource evaluation and management
- ATS3558 Global change and the earth system
- ATS3787 Research methods in geography environment and sustainability
- ATS3788 Soils, landscape and their management
- ATS3790 Landscape processes (field-based unit in outback Australia)
- ATS3791 Environmental change: Past to future
- ATS3887 Designing urban futures: Urban climate, water and adaptation
- ATS3898/APG4893 Special topics in sustainability
- ATS3902 Geopolitics of climate change
Units not offered in 2011
- ATS2886 Tourism and the environment
- ATS3282 Social space: Urban justice
- ATS3557 Out of Africa: Human evolution, world heritage and museums
- ATS3886 Tourism and the environment
- ATS3556 Urbanisation and regional development in the Indo-Pacific rims
South Africa
First-year level
Students studying a first year sequence in geography and environmental science must complete two units (12 points), including the compulsory unit, from the following:
- ATS1306 Introduction to human geography
- ATS1308 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 2011
- ATS1307 Techniques in geography and environmental science
- ATS1309 The global challenge
- ATS2776 Climatology: Land, ecosystems and the atmosphere
- ATS3553 Field studies in regional sustainability
