Explore Aquatic Conservation and Restoration at UCL

Teaching blends lectures, seminars and laboratory sessions. Discussion is encouraged throughout, ensuring you test ideas, interpret evidence and build confidence applying methods to real conservation challenges.

Core fieldcourses have visited the North Norfolk Coast and the Scottish Highlands. Optional trips include Dorset (Aquatic Macrophytes) and Ireland (Field Evidence of Environmental Change). Fieldwork embeds skills, teamwork and place-based understanding.

You’ll analyse sediment cores to reconstruct past aquatic environments. This reveals how ecosystems respond to human pressures over centuries, helping diagnose problems and guide future management.

You’ll design and implement monitoring programmes to assess environmental condition and status, and develop modelling skills to predict future hydro-ecological change.

Jan the Convenor of the MSc Conservation programme. His research covers a wide range of issues related to global biodiversity conservation in forested and agricultural landscapes. He is also an Affiliate Professor at the Agricultural University of Iceland.

See Professor Axmacher's UCL Profile
 

Jon directs the Coastal and Estuarine Research Unit. His research interests extend across coastal, estuarine and lacustrine environments and mainly concern the dynamics of coupled natural, socio-economic and engineered infrastructure systems and their resilience to geohazards and climate change. He has expertise in hydrodynamic and physical process modelling, data-driven 'machine learning' methods, and behavioural system modelling.

See Professor French's UCL Profile

The central aim of Helene's research is to explain coastal behaviour, system dynamics and mechanisms of forcing over decades and centuries. In particular, she is exploring the relative importance of intrinsic system control versus external climate forcing on the geomorphology and morphodynamics of coastal sedimentary systems.

See Professor Buringham's UCL Profile

Helen's research interests are in aquatic ecology and palaeoecology with a focus on freshwater diatoms. She is interested in the scientific application of lake management and conservation, particularly the EU Water Framework Directive. Her publications include around 70 academic articles and over 80 research reports and she is a peer reviewer for numerous international scientific journals and funding bodies. She has supervised more than 20 Master's and PhD students.

See Professor Bennion's UCL Profile

David is Deputy Chair of the Physical Geography MSc programme and Deputy Director of the London Natural Environment Research Council Doctoral Training Programme (NERC DTP). His research investigates the role of the ocean in the climate system, with his work revealing the exceptional nature of industrial-era changes in Atlantic circulation and ecosystems.

See Professor Thornalley's UCL Profile

Richard's research seeks to inform sustainable, safe water supplies in low-income countries. From 2009 to 2018, he led an International Association of Hydrologists (IAH) Commission on Groundwater and Climate Change and is a contributing author to two chapters of the IPCC's 6th Assessment Report, Water Cycle Changes and Africa.

See Professor Taylor's UCL Profile

Sam's research interests are at the interface of business, science and the environment, with a particular focus on weather and climate. His recent research focuses on the development of 19th-century weather-related insurance and histories of climate policies.

See Dr Randall's UCL Profile

Jonathan is the Director of the Environmental Change Research Centre. His research is concerned with the reconstruction of late Pleistocene and Holocene climates using lake sediments, abrupt climate change, human–climate interactions and data-model comparisons. He has authored over 100 publications and supervised/co-supervised over 20 PhD students.

See Professor Holmes' UCL Profile

Muki is the Co-Director of the Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) group and co-founder of the social enterprise Mapping for Change. His work focuses on participatory mapping, crowdsourced geographic information and citizen science, alongside public access, use and creation of environmental information.

See Professor Haklay's UCL Profile

Julian's research includes the investigation of hydrological functioning and numerical modelling in wetland environments. This has predominantly, but not exclusively, involved freshwater ecosystems. His work has focused on the wider catchment hydrological context and the links between wetland hydrology and ecology. In addition, his research investigates the impacts and associated uncertainties of climate change and anthropogenic activities on wetlands, river basins and water resources.

See Professor Thompson's UCL Profile

Jorge is a Lecturer in Environmental Change specialising in freshwater ecology, landscape ecology and palaeoecology in both tropical and temperate freshwater ecosystems. He is a member of the Environmental Change and Biodiversity (RECB) research cluster.

See Dr Salgado's UCL Profile