EPHM7110 Principles of Environmental Management

How EPHM7110 is assessed

The published course outline gives continuous assessment at seventy per cent, shared equally between an individual assignment of thirty five marks and a group assignment of thirty five marks, and an examination at thirty per cent. The three numeric rows total one hundred. No hurdle requirement, pass mark or grading scale appears in the course materials available here, and no format, duration or date is published for the examination, so this guide makes no claim about any of them. Confirm all of these on the course site.

Current EPHM7110 dates

Dates are as published in the published group assignment brief and the submission point on the course site. Confirm exact deadlines and submission settings in the live LMS.

What EPHM7110 covers

Twelve chapters follow the published topic sequence from ecosystems and energy flow through nutrient cycles and population ecology to the pressures on biodiversity, protected areas, treaties and the question of who pays for conservation.

Its published aims are to study ecosystems and their relationship with atmospheric, hydrological and geomorphological systems, to examine the impacts of human activity on the balance of ecosystems and the ethical bases of conservation biology, and to illustrate scientific principles through worldwide and familiar examples so that students become personally involved in solving environmental problems.

All four published learning outcomes are comparison and judgement verbs rather than recall verbs, which decides how the whole course should be read.

Ecosystems, energy and the cycles underneath everything else

The first four chapters build the physical picture.

Biodiversity is held at three levels at once, ecosystems, species and genes, and the organisation ladder from atom to biosphere fixes what kind of claim each piece of evidence can carry. Energy enters as sunlight and leaves as heat, with ninety per cent lost at every trophic transfer, which is an arithmetical constraint on what any system can yield.

Water, carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus each cycle between named reservoirs, and the examinable part is always which pathway human activity has altered. The chapter on ecosystem services turns all of that into management language, because two of the four service families never appear on an invoice.

Populations, because that is what a measure acts on

Chapters five to seven move from the system to the population.

Ecology is defined by three verbs, detect, explain and generalise, and the middle one is the one weak arguments skip. Populations are counted by census, quadrat, transect or mark and recapture, and the assumptions behind an estimate carry more marks than the arithmetic.

Growth follows one of two shapes that are indistinguishable until numbers approach the carrying capacity, life history traits move together as a package, and survivorship curves say where in the life cycle a species is actually losing individuals.

Pressures, and the measures aimed at them

The second half of the course is environmental management proper.

Five named drivers account for the pressure on global biodiversity, and the discipline being tested is attaching only the ones the evidence supports. Four kinds of biological resource are harvested, and sustainable harvest has four stated conditions of which monitoring is the one most often dropped.

Extinction risk is graded against published thresholds, with nine categories of which two describe the state of the evidence rather than the species.

Protected areas are governance arrangements rather than fences, and conservation away from the habitat carries preconditions that rule it out as a first response in most cases.

Law, treaties and the question the course leaves open

The final chapter holds instruments by what they reach rather than by their names, across a chain running from habitat through harvest to export, import and sale.

Two international conventions are built for different problems, one enforcing permits attached to specimens and the other committing states to outcomes.

The course then closes on two ethical questions it deliberately does not answer: whether we protect all of biodiversity or only the useful parts, given that its own definition of a natural resource is framed by usefulness to people, and who should pay when the greatest loss falls on the poorest countries.

Worked example · free

Frame a wetland issue so that the response half can be answered

Key terms

Ecosystem

Several species living together and trading matter and energy with the non living surroundings they share. Adding the physical surroundings to a community is what lets you ask why a species is present at all, and it is the level at which a single physical change can explain several biological observations.

Trophic Level

A position in a food chain, counted upward from the producers. It is a position rather than a property of a species, which is why an animal that eats both plants and animals occupies more than one at the same time.

Biogeochemical Cycle

The circulation of a nutrient between the non living environment of air, water, soil and rock and the organisms that use it. Reading one means naming its reservoirs, its processes and the pathway people have altered.

Eutrophication

Nutrient enrichment of water that stimulates algal growth, raises decomposition, depletes oxygen and kills fish. The fish kill is the fourth link in that sequence, which is why aquatic pollution so often presents as an oxygen problem.

Ecosystem Service

A benefit a person receives from a working ecosystem, grouped into provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting families. The supporting family is defined as indirect and slow, which is exactly the combination a market price cannot register.

Natural Capital

the stock of natural resources and of working natural processes that keeps people and other living things alive and holds up economies. Resources are materials or energy useful to people; services are processes that support life and economies.

Carrying Capacity

The maximum population size an environment can sustain, set by critical resources in limited supply such as food, mates and water. Use held above it accumulates damage even when the level of use has stopped rising.

Mark And Recapture

A population estimate made by marking a first sample, releasing it and reading the marked fraction of a second sample. Six assumptions decide whether the estimate holds, and a breach of any one moves it in a predictable direction.

Invasive Alien Species

A non native species introduced by people that harms native wildlife, threatens human health and safety, or causes economic damage. Harm rather than origin is what the definition turns on, which keeps the priority list short.

Extinction Vortex

The reinforcing cycle in which a small population suffers inbreeding and genetic drift, loses genetic variability, reproduces less and dies more, and becomes smaller again. It continues after the original threat is removed.

Red List

The international ranking of species by extinction risk, using nine categories assigned by expert assessment against five published criteria. A taxon is threatened if it meets any one of the criteria.

Sustainable Harvest

Taking a biological resource at a rate the population can replace, under four stated conditions: population dynamics, harvesting technique, stakeholder buy in, and monitoring with control.

In Situ Conservation

Protection carried out where the species already lives, through reserves, national parks and forest parks with three levels of access control. It is the first fork in every conservation decision the course sets out.

EPHM7110 FAQ

Questions students ask in each EPHM7110 chapter

Why does the course insist on three levels of biodiversity rather than a species count?

Because a place can hold every one of its recorded organisms and still be losing the thing that keeps it working. Genetic variation inside a small remnant shrinks without any name disappearing from a list, and one of two habitat types can be filled or drained while the checklist stays identical. Counting names measures the level that is easiest to observe and slowest to respond, so a report built on it will register a loss years after the loss began. Chapter 01 · Ecosystems and the Levels of Biological Organisation

Why do top predators stay rare even in a healthy system?

Because abundance follows the same tenfold fall as usable energy. Each step upward retains about a tenth of what the step below held, so the mass available to whatever feeds at the summit is a small fraction of what the plants fixed. Scarcity there is the normal condition rather than a symptom of mismanagement, and it also explains why a target expressed as a number of large animals has to be read against how productive the system underneath them is. Chapter 02 · Energy Flow and the Loss at Every Trophic Step

Why is nitrogen so abundant and so often in short supply at the same time?

Almost the whole atmospheric store is in a form no plant can take up. It has to be converted first, either by lightning or by particular bacteria, and only after that conversion can it be absorbed and built into proteins and nucleic acids. Abundance in the air therefore says nothing about availability in the soil, and that gap is why fertiliser manufacture changed agriculture and why the same fertiliser now drives so much water pollution. Chapter 03 · Nutrient Cycles and Where Human Activity Enters

Why does a market valuation miss the same family every time?

Because the two things that make a benefit easy to price are the two things that family lacks. A price forms where someone receives something directly and soon enough to notice. Soil formation, nutrient cycling and habitat provision are described as indirect and slow by definition, so nobody is ever in a position to pay for one of them separately. The omission is structural, which is also why pointing it out is a stronger criticism than accusing the analyst of bias. Chapter 04 · Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital

Which of the four method axes is the best one to be on?

None of them, and that is the point of drawing them as continua. Control is bought with artificiality, realism is bought with noise, causation is bought by manipulating something that then stops being the situation you cared about. Every gain has a matching cost, so the useful question is not which design is better but what the design in front of you is unable to rule out, and whether a second study covers that gap. Chapter 05 · How Ecologists Ask Questions, and How Species Adapt

Why is an empty habitat patch still worth protecting?

Because occupancy fluctuates in a fragmented landscape. Groups in individual patches die out and are refounded by animals arriving from elsewhere, so a patch that is bare this season may have held animals last season and may be recolonised next. Removing it takes a destination out of the network permanently and reduces the chance that any future local failure is repaired, which is a different loss from the area figure it appears as on a plan. Chapter 06 · Counting and Describing a Population in the Field

A population has grown steadily for five years. Can you tell which curve it is on?

Not yet. Both shapes trace the same path while numbers remain far below the ceiling, because the resources that eventually bite have not started to bite. The record separates them only after it reaches the region where one keeps accelerating and the other begins to flatten, so an honest report from an early period describes the measured rate and names the level at which a change of shape would be expected. Chapter 07 · Population Growth and the Limits That Bind It

What is wrong with calling every non native species invasive?

The definition turns on damage, not on origin. Most arrivals fail to establish and most of those that do establish harm nothing, so applying the label everywhere overstates the scale of the problem and, worse, spreads limited eradication effort across organisms that were never going to cost anything. Reserving the word for arrivals that demonstrably injure wildlife, health or the economy keeps the priority list short enough to act on. Chapter 08 · The Big Five Threats to Biodiversity

Why does the value of a forest depend on which products you count?

Because only some of what a forest yields has a market price. Sawn wood is measured, traded and easy to enter in a column, while fruits, resins, mushrooms and medicinal material are gathered informally and rarely recorded, even though they can be taken without removing a tree. An appraisal that compares a priced total against an unpriced one reaches a felling recommendation by arithmetic rather than by judgement. Chapter 09 · Harvesting Biological Resources Without Losing Them

Why is the insufficient evidence category not a reassuring one?

Because it reports a gap in our knowledge rather than a finding about the animal. The species placed there are often the ones that are hard to find, hard to tell apart or live somewhere rarely surveyed, and those are precisely the characteristics that go with small ranges and small numbers. Summarising a fauna as mostly secure with a few of these has described the assessed part of the fauna, which is a smaller claim than it sounds. Chapter 10 · Extinction Risk and the IUCN Red List

Why is adjacent land use one of the four opening questions?

Because a boundary is only as good as what presses against it from outside. Fields, roads, drainage and settlement at the edge determine how much of the interior actually behaves like interior, whether animals leaving the site survive, and whether the people nearest to it have any reason to respect the line. Two sites of identical size and quality can therefore perform very differently, and the difference is entirely outside the boundary. Chapter 11 · Protected Areas and Conservation Beyond Reserves

Why can a species be listed internationally and still be cleared from its habitat?

Because the listing regulates movement across borders, and clearing land is neither an export nor a sale. Permits attach to specimens in transit, so nothing in that system reaches a bulldozer. The instruments that can reach it are domestic, a protected designation over the ground or a planning and impact requirement, and the international commitment that speaks to habitat binds the state to outcomes rather than binding a landowner to an act. Chapter 12 · Conservation Law, Treaties and Who Pays

How to study for the exam

Carry one wetland or catchment you can find real figures for through every chapter, and answer each chapter's question about that site before reading the chapter's own answer. Chapter three will ask which cycle it interrupts, chapter seven what sets its carrying capacity, chapter ten how a resident species would be graded, and chapter eleven whether a boundary helps it.

By the time the group presentation asks for past and current situation supported with statistics, the statistics will already be in your notes and the scoping step that costs most teams their marks will be done. Then practise the move the whole course is built on: write the mechanism in one line, write the evidence under it, and write what would have to be true for a proposed measure to work.

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