Order Description
You must choose a topic within one of the disciplines of environmental science (geoscience, environmental chemistry or ecology). You must restrict your review to the role of science in
environmental management for that discipline. You may decide to review one specific topic or a range of topics within that discipline.

Scientific papers can be pretty daunting at first but this is the form in which original research first appears. Primary scientific references describe the rationale for the investigation, the
approaches, methods and the findings. Secondary references are a step removed from the original work and include review articles. You will be writing a review article, and you must include at least
12 peer reviewed scientific papers that report the results of research in your chosen discipline. Each student should independently decide which specific topic to review.

The topic must be in the category of one of the environmental disciplines covered in this course (i.e. geoscience, environmental chemistry or ecology). You are also encouraged to look critically at
scientific data. In the first lecture you will learn about the nature of science and why scientific experiments can be so difficult to carry out. The experimental design and execution inevitably
has many shortcomings and if you come to appreciate the inherent difficulties you will be better equipped to spot weaknesses in published research and to undertake critical review. In the first
Scientific Writing Workshop (Literature reviews) you will learn how to set out your topic and how to present your critical analysis of the literature.