Kursöversikt

Welcome to the course GVK430 Environmental geology, case study, 15 hp, 2025

Observera att schemat är preliminärt t.o.m. två veckor innan kursstart.

Schema

KursplanLänkar till en externa sida.

Example Exams 

During the course introduction you will meet me, Magnus Hellqvist, responsible for the course and main teacher. I am a contract teacher at Department of Earth Sciences, Gothenburg University, but work at consult company Geoveta in Stockholm, working with environmental geology and other environmental issues. I am basically a Quaternary geologist, with a PhD at Uppsala university, but I have a wide experience and today I call myself both Quasternary geologist, environmental geologist as well as environmental engineer. I used to work with research and education for 25 years, but started working on a societal basis for more than 7 years ago.

At the first occasion I will inform you on how the course is built up and managed, as well as other practical issues concerning the course. You will mostly meet me as teacher, but there are a few occasions with guest teachers giving presentation on some subjects concerning environmental geology, like groundwater, sulfuric bedrock, contaminated ground and brown soils, laboratory work, pesticides etc.

Thinking, sampling, evaluating... trying to understand the condition on this soil! Underneath here is water source for 40 000 people!

The course will mainly be on Campus at Natrium in Gothenburg. But it is to some extent a hybrid course, and some parts are online in Teams or Zoom. This is an adaption to my one situation, but also so I can engage colleagues in some different subjects during the course. I will, though, go to Campus in Gothenburg as much as possible.

The course is much "blended learning", with different practice, assignments, case study, field work and sampling and projects etc., and also a theoretical examination in some variant. There will be project groups where you who participate in the course is part of one group and this group will do some tasks in the course together. One of the major things is the project work and assignment.

This project work is based on field work at a site and this year we have our field work sites in Falun and close to the old Falun Coppermine. The municipality have two estates they need to investigate for contaminants, mainly soil but maybe also water, and your work will be a kind of reinvestigation to help them knowing how to proceed their work. The Falun municipality is very keen and interested in the outcome of the course projects. But there will also be opportunities for us to visit and experience this exiting site.

You might see upon this group as a project group, company group or similar where the final outcome of this is when the group will present the results of the project during the course. The group project will result in:

• a report,
• a poster
• a oral presentation,
• a abstract on this oral presentation and project work,
• opposition on other groups work, thereafter revision of work,

The final part with presentations, is at the same time a presentation for your client who asked for your investigation. The client is me!

Beyond the project, I have divided the course into two main parts, a theoretical and a practical part. This means you will do both theory and practice at the same time. As you can see in the schedule, there are several tasks to work with during the course:

• Assignments with reading a text, like article or report, and summarizing this in an abstract. There is a general instruction for this. The subject for the texts is primarily some current subject.
• Assignments in form of practice, that you do together in the group, which also are summarized in the form I present in the instruction. This can be a minor report on the results or a protocol to be used in the group.
• Seminars where we discuss your readings of the chosen text and/or practice, reported in abstracts or minor report/protocol.
• Regular lectures, that are more general presentations on environmental geology and close subjects, and here you also meet some guest teachers.

Environmental geology is not something you learn from a book only, it is very much experience based and a question of problem solving, but the theory is very important. I hope to get you to start working with your already much learned knowledge, to start to do what I believe is the most important challenge for us today!

Aha - now I know! No problem this time, time to report! No need for panic.

Kontakt/E-post:

Kursledare: Magnus Hellqvist

 Studievägledare: svl@gvc.gu.se

Kursadministratör:  studentadmin@gvc.gu.se

Utbildningsansvarig:  Emily Whitehurst Zack

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