Course Description
Watershed Management & Restoration for Environmental Education & Ecotourism (APSC4005) is a fully online, non-credit course that offers knowledge about the effective management of watersheds in relation to the threats they face from urbanization and sprawl, as well as covering approaches used in the socio-ecological restoration and transformation of degraded landscapes into sites for environmental education and ecotourism. This non-quantitative course focuses on social-ecological management and restoration of degraded landscapes and how they can be transformed into becoming sites for environmental education and ecotourism. See overview of course topics below.
Course Outline
The objective of this course is to introduce participants to the one of the most popular and important forms of contemporary environmental management. The course approaches this goal through the fields of social-ecological watershed management and environmental restoration, which blend together science and sociology, often through the lenses of landscape architecture and ecological engineering. By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
- Understand the link between environmental restoration and ecotourism, and selected elements of Canadian water policy
- Understand the principles of effective, integrative watershed management
- Recognize how GIS analysis can aid in studying deleterious human influences on freshwater ecosystems, and the importance of stewardship and participation in successful environmental restoration
- Understand the diversity of options available to improve social-ecological conditions through land-use planning in international settings
- Foster an appreciation for inter-disciplinary, in particular the ability to study and analyze projects holistically in terms of deliverables through the co-dependent lenses of science, sociology, landscape architecture and land use planning
- Develop and hone their critical skills in reviewing, synthesizing, and distilling information in the form of digital presentations and technical briefs
What You Will Learn
Module One: Watershed Management and Education:
Watersheds have become recognized as being the most effective landscape units for ecologically sound environmental management and planning, as well as for environmental education. Managing watersheds is often about managing people in the watersheds. This module will explore the sociology and science of watershed management and planning by reviewing the successes and limitations of illustrative case studies. Background topics include:
- watershed atlases
- water sensitive planning
- water resource and watershed management
- land-use systems analysis
- community-based monitoring and management by “citizen-scientists”
Module Two: Environmental Restoration Design:
Noted American environmentalist Aldo Leopold once remarked that we live in a damaged “world of wounds.” Today, one of the most rapidly expanding environmental fields is that of restoration. By replacing apathy with action and therefore fatalism with hope, environmental restoration may be the best means of saving environmentalism from itself. Such restoration is as much about process as product, sociology as ecology, and artful design as empirical engineering or science. Critics, however, warn that restoration is a slippery and dangerous slope, only providing bandage fixes while creating new natures that are mere fakes of the real things lost.
This module will:
- review the theoretical and philosophical debates concerning environmental restoration and consider why it is the most intellectually challenging of all forms of contemporary environmental management
- specifically examine case studies involving the return of damaged land to a ‘natural’ state for purposes of ecotourism and environmental education.
Other topics include:
- regeneration of post-industrial urban sites
- ecocultural restorative redevelopment of devastated landscapes in the developing world
Notes
Virtual guest speakers
Participants will be exposed to some of the world’s leading landscape architects, environmental scientists and land use planners through lectures of theirs that were recorded at conferences organized by Dr. France at Harvard and Dalhousie Universities. Among these speakers are: Bob Zimmerman, David Blau, Jeff Schloss, Deb Martin-Downs, Bob Gearheart, Ann Spirn and John Gunn (about whom more information can be found through online searches).
Course format, expectations and assessment
Participants taking the non-credit Extended Learning option are enrolled into and take the course simultaneous to Dalhousie students. There are, however, differences undertaken in the required work throughout the term.
For each week, learning material is presented in several different formats. First, a set of power point presentations (PPTs) are provided that contain information distilled from many pertinent sources. These PPTs contain voice-over dialogue by the professor to guide the participant through, while emphasizing the most important elements therein. Next, one or several video lectures are viewed. These are our virtual guest speakers -- representing some of the world’s leading practitioners and researchers – who were filmed previously at a series of conferences run at Harvard and Dalhousie Universities. Finally, one or two chapters from the course text books will need to be read for each week.
Participants will be required to purchase two books that are used for the assignments. Module 1 -- France, R.L. (Ed.) 2005. Facilitating Watershed Management: Fostering Awareness and Stewardship. Rowman & Littlefield. Module 2 -- France, R.L. (Ed.) 2008. Healing Natures, Repairing Relationships: New Perspectives on Restoring Ecological Spaces and Consciousness. Green Frigate Books. An open-access website, Integrated Watershed Management will also serve as an additional course textbook.
Participants produce a list of short salient points that demonstrate they have viewed the online material and read the chapter(s) in the assigned book. These are submitted a handful of times during the course.
There is no final exam.
In addition to the salient points, participants will have to complete a series of small ‘lab’ exercises and participate in developing a professional brief addressing elements to conceptually ‘restore’ conditions for a real-world location of their own choosing.
Successful completion of the course is based on an overall passing grade of 70%. Participants must complete the assignments (the final professional brief can be undertaken as a group) in addition to submitting the salient points for the lectures, PPTs and chapter readings.
Recommended For
The course, which has been taught online for four years, has developed a reputation among students and distance learning professionals for being one of the best organized online courses currently taught at the university. Its reputation is such that it has even attracted enrollment from students at other universities in the region.