The previous Natural Resource Management (NRM) courses have focused on the inventory natural resources and to detect and assess changes in the environment such as loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, deforestation and forest degradation and threats to food security due to decreased crop yields. Different methods and techniques are available to guide NRM in its efforts to reverse resource degradation or alleviate its consequences. Proper understanding of cause and effect of changes in natural resources is crucial to achieve this. As these changes occur in the real-world, and not in a laboratory set-up, making statements about causal relations is a challenge.
In this course, students will study generic techniques and apply and evaluate environmental models that aim to estimate change in natural resources in response to environmental changes.