Water education programs

Watercourses Online

Offered by: eWater CRC, University of Canberra
Location: Canberra, Australia
Program type: Online course
Keywords: Ecology, catchment, waterway assessment
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Program location

Program description

Online training
Top up your knowledge about the ecology of Australian river systems and how they are affected by catchment land-use and other human activities.

Gather the skills and understanding of ecology, chemistry or assessment needed for such tasks as State-of-the-Environment reporting, and applying the national guidelines for water quality and water-quality monitoring.

How? Watercourses Online would be a good choice.
Watercourses Online is a growing set of online training courses, designed primarily to support personnel in water management, natural resources management, environmental education and ecological consulting.

Three individual courses are available now:
• Ecology and river function
• Waterway assessment
• Catchments: their character, waters & chemical composition.

Watercourses Online are offered by the eWater CRC through the University of Canberra, and run by Richard Norris, William Maher and Sue Nichols. This team already runs the very successful AUSRIVAS Online modular courses for water industry personnel.

A description of each course is included below.

Course 1: Ecology and river function
A self-paced Watercourse covering:
- ecological patterns and processes occurring at various scales in Australian river systems
- the role of disturbance (both natural and human) and how the ecosystems respond
- the influence of catchment character on energy sources and food webs.
The course consists of one module, costing $440 (includes GST)

Course 2: Catchments: their character, waters & chemical composition
A self-paced Watercourse covering:
- catchment processes that influence the chemical composition of natural waterways
- catchment character and weathering processes that influence water chemistry
- nutrient cycling and carbon cycling and the role of physical, biological and chemical processes
- the importance of organic carbon in aquatic ecosystems and how it is affected by changes in the landscape.
The course consists of one module, costing $440 (includes GST).

Course 3: Waterway assessment
A self-paced Watercourse covering:
- the basic differences between rivers, lakes and estuaries
- why different assessment techniques are needed for each of them
- an introduction to physical, chemical and biological methods of assessment; and how to integrate the condition assessments, e.g. for State-of-the-Environment reporting
- Australia’s national water-quality and monitoring guidelines and how to apply them
- collecting aquatic ecosystem data; and quality assurance and quality control to ensure data integrity.

The course consists of one module and one optional face-to-face one-day workshop.
It costs $1760 (includes GST), plus $440 (includes GST) for the optional workshop.

Source of text, figures and link: The website of Watercourses Online of the University of Canberra

Application deadline:

More information (external link to the program)

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