EAE2322: Environmental Earth Science

30% Practical class reports/questions
5% for each report for 6 of the practicals throughout semester. These were usually due at the beginning of the next practical class. As with everything throughout semester, it was equally balanced between soils, water and vegetation – two pracs were about soils, two were about water and two were about vegetation. There were some pracs throughout semester that weren’t assessed, but they helped with the final report. They were generally pretty enjoyable and some finished a little early, however some were quite complex, especially the water pracs, as they involved some difficult chemistry concepts and equations that not everyone was familiar with. Being up to date with lectures would be useful, in order to properly understand everything that’s going on. Note that the first prac class was actually a mini field trip to the Cranbourne Botanical Gardens in a group – this was a good way to get to know others, however it was quite a way to go and seemed like a lot of work for just 5%, especially as we had barely learnt anything yet.

5% Field trip report
This subject has a two-day field trip (Sat/Sun) over the weekend after week 5. The price was quite steep ($120), however this included 1x dinner, 1x breakfast, 1x lunch, accommodation and transport to Camp Rumbug, in South Gippsland near Leongatha. It involved making some field notes/site descriptions and collecting many samples to analyse during subsequent prac classes in a group. The field notes you take on the day, and a few questions and drawings, make up a mini report/handout worth 5% that’s due two Mondays after the field trip. If you’ve written enough during the field trip, you don’t need to spend much extra time on this.

5% Poster presentation
During the prac classes in weeks 6, 7 and 8, you spend time in your groups analysing the samples you took. For soils, this includes sifting the samples and making solutions to determine conductivity, pH and preparing samples for cation concentration analyses. For water, this includes preparing collected sediment, soil and leaf samples to be analysed. For vegetation, this involves counting tree rings of a tree core and correlating it to climate data. All this data is then used for the final field trip report and the poster presentation.

The poster presentation involves presenting either the soil, water or vegetation results as a group. This is pretty straightforward, however because there is such little room to work with, you need to be selective about what data you choose to present and organise the layout carefully to make sure everything fits and is formatted properly.

10% Final field trip report
This is an individual field trip report of 1500 words. It included an introduction, site description, description of methods, results, discussion and conclusion. There is a lot of information to work with, and the advice given was to present all the data they explicitly asked for and discuss only some things in greater detail. It was quite difficult to keep within the word limit, however the marking rubric was quite detailed and we had some guidelines for each section and were told what data we had to present, which helped.

50% Exam
2 hour closed book exam. Two parts – short answer and extended response. Weighted equally between soils, water and vegetation questions. The main issue a lot of people had was that we had no practice questions or past exams to study with, however I felt that the exam was pretty fair. For almost all questions, you had some sort of choice on what you could answer. For example, in the soils short answer section, there were two questions listed under each question and you only had to answer one. In the water short answer section, you only had to answer three out of the four questions listed. This gave us a bit of choice in what we had to answer, which was quite helpful!

This subject was quite enjoyable! It sort of sets you up for three third-year EAE subjects – Vanessa (EAE3321), Ruth (EAE3311) and Adam (EAE3342) each contribute to/lecture in/run one of them. It can also be a prerequisite for many other third-year EAE units and some third-year arts units as well, so it’s quite popular.

I think the best part about this subject was the field trip, which is usually the case for most EAE units! It’s just for a weekend in South Gippsland, learning about the interactions between soils, water and vegetation. You get to take samples and use equipment such as augers and drones, and it feels like you are analysing real data when you get the results.

The workload is pretty standard for EAE units. The back half of the unit had many more assessments due than the first half, so the workload tends to ramp up a bit then (as with many other units!). The fact that the poster presentation and final report are both due in week 12 is a bit tough, however some of the results/data you analyse for the poster can also be used in the report, so it’s sort of like you’re working on two things at once.
In summary, this unit is a pretty popular one and a good overview of many different topics in earth sciences. It gives a ‘preview’ of some of the higher-level EAE subjects. There’s a big focus on the field trip, and rightfully so. 😊

Dr Vanessa Wong, Dr Ruth Reef, Dr Adam Kessler

No exams provided.

4.5 out of 5

Yes, with screen capture

No textbook for this subject. Any readings were listed at the end of each lecture’s slides or posted on Moodle.

3x1hr lectures, 1x3hr practical

2018, Semester 2