UWA PLUS
Understanding Urban Soils
Soils are essential to sustain terrestrial life on Earth and perform critical ecosystem functions. Increasingly, soils are just as important in the highly modified environments of cities and peri-urban areas as they are in natural or agricultural environments.
In this course you will explore and the past and present connections between soils and urban ecosystems, against the background of increasing urbanisation of Earth's human population. You will study how and why urban soils differ from (or resemble) non-urban soils, and consider the archaeological information preserved by soils in cities.
You will examine the processes that add materials such as pollutants to urban soils, and how urban soils can also contribute material to other environmental compartments. Finally, you will study how the relationship between urban soils and human health (such as, but not only, soil contamination) can be understood in the context of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.
We also raise the issue of what 'environmental justice' means in the context of urban soils, and discuss the types of soil-related environmental benefits and risks that are unfairly distributed in cities.
Upon successful completion, you'll receive:
- Two PD Points - stackable for unspecified academic credit in award courses
- A Certificate of Achievement
- A UWA Plus Professional Development Transcript, listing all successfully completed micro-credentials
- Delivery mode
- Online Course date
- 23 May 2022
- or
- 17 October 2022
- Applications close
- 16 May 2022 (May start)
- or
- 10 October 2022 (Oct start)
- Duration
- 8 weeks
- Effort
- 50 hours (including contact hours, personal study time and assessment)
- Academic lead
- Dr Andrew Rate
- Cost
- $660 inc. GST
- Critical information summary
- ENVTM201 Understanding Urban Soils [PDF 41KB]
What you'll learn
Explain how cities and soils are related in history and the present day
Understand the ecosystem functions performed by soils in cities
Know how urban soils preserve human signatures of contamination and/or archaeological information
Critically assess the role of the urban soil resource in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
Why study this course?
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Explore how soils and urban ecosystems are connected, in our urbanising world, comparing urban soils with non-urban.
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Study archaeology in soils in cities, contamination processes, relationships between soils and urban health through a Sustainable Development Goals lens, and discuss soil related environmental justice.
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For people who have not studied soil science formally, this course introduces the soils many of us are most familiar with - in the gardens, parks and open spaces of the cities we live in.
Who should study this course?
- Local government land managers, environmental consultants, landscape architects, landscape gardeners, urban food producers, urban planners, and anyone with an interest in soils in urban areas.
How does it work?
- The course is structured as pre-recorded videos to support self-guided learning, plus weekly real-time online workshops.
What's next after this course?
- Students may be able to stack this micro-credential with other short micro-credentials from UWA to obtain advanced standing
credit towards units in a future degree or diploma.