Close
MSc Biodiversity and Global Change
MSc Biodiversity and Global Change Degree Overview
The MSc Biodiversity and Global Change provides a grounding in the science that is essential for tackling the biodiversity crisis in an era of global change. The MSc provides vocational training for those developing careers in applied conservation, environmental policy, and environmental management. This new programme took its first cohort in 2021.
Biodiversity provides many benefits to people, for example by pollinating crops, controlling pests, promoting soil fertility, and providing goods and aesthetic pleasure. Yet biodiversity is threatened, with global and local extinctions and widespread population declines driven by factors including land use change, climate change, overharvesting and invasive species.
Maintaining biodiversity is crucial for supporting economic and social development, as recognized in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and through initiatives such as the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). To understand biodiversity and prevent further loss, we need to meld approaches from ecology, evolution and conservation biology.
2022 Field Trip: Blakeney Point
The trip, which involved students staying on Blakeney Point for two to three nights, provides students with their first exposure to teaching on their course, and aims to encourage them to think about experimental design, how to design a protocol for field sampling to solve a specific problem, and collect data following said protocol. This introduces them to some of the problems they may experience whilst working with biological samples and sampling.
UCL has been running field trips to Blakeney Point for over a century. Students arrive by boat in small groups and are often the only people staying on the Point at one time. During their stay, students are able to see the habitat of an array of residential and migratory wildlife.
Professor Tim Blackburn states: “The Blakeney field trip is a great way for us to get to know the students – and for the students to get to know each other – against the backdrop of one of England’s oldest nature reserves." You can read about the 2022 visit to Blakeney Point in this article: Latest News from Blakeney Point.
Career Opportunities
The MSc will provide vocational training for those developing careers in applied conservation, environmental policy, and environmental management.
There is growing need for individuals with strong grounding in these disciplines to play central roles in tackling this challenge within different sectors, including government departments, NGOs, businesses, and academia. We can meet this need due to our long experience with teaching methods in biology that promote biodiversity education and how they support biodiversity learning.
