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Høst 2023

BIO-3020 Fundamentals of Ecotoxicology - 10 stp


The course is administrated by

Institutt for arktisk og marin biologi

Type of course

The course is relevant for students belonging to the Master in Biology programme and especially for students taking the Arctic Marine Ecotoxicology specialisation as well as the Arctic Animal Physiology or Arctic Marine Ecology.

The course is available as a singular course.

Maximum number of participants: 30


Course overlap

BIO-2012 Fundamentals of Ecotoxicolgy I 10 ects

Course contents

The course covers general principles of ecotoxicology through lectures, seminars, and a practical component. The course is essentially dealing with aquatic ecotoxicology, but terrestrial case studies can also be used.

More specifically, the course deals with environmental contaminants and their fate in the environment, including emissions, transport of contaminants and effects in biota from cellular to community/ecosystem levels. Lectures provide an introduction to ecotoxicological approaches, toxicity testing, general concepts and theories (e.g. mode of actions, mixture toxicities, ecotoxicological modelling), and a part on risk assessment. Seminars focus on studying more in detail specific contaminants or approaches. The seminars are organized as case studies with scientific papers or datasets to read in advance and directed group discussions in class.

The practical component of the course allows to acquire practical skills related to experimental design, sampling and analytical procedures and apply theoretical knowledge. Every student is writing a report over the course of the semester with weekly deadlines to hand-in drafts of specific report section. Written feedback is given to every student to progress and improve their writing skills and the quality of their report. This work provides significant training in scientific writing and presentation of research results.

Teamwork building is also an important aspect of the practical component of the course as well as the seminars.


Admission requirements

Admission requires a Bachelor`s degree (180 ECTS) or equivalent qualification, with a major in biology of minimum 80 ECTS.

Local admission, application code 9371 - Master`s level singular course.


Objective of the course

Knowledge

Skills

General competence


Language of instruction

Language of instruction is English. It is allowed for Scandinavian students to write their reports and written exam in a Scandinavian language.

Teaching methods

Lectures (13 x 90 min), seminars (6 x 90 min) including seminar preparation (1 hours per seminar), experimental work (2 days per student), laboratory work (3 days per student), 1 x pc-lab (6h) and home assignments (weekly submission of report sections).