Ecological Engineering Minor (B.Eng. (Bioresource)) (18 credits)
Offered by: Agricultural & Env.Sc.-Dean (Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences)
Degree: Bachelor of Engineering (Bioresource))
Program credit weight: 18
Program Description
The B.Eng. (Bioresource); Minor in Ecological Engineering covers principles for developing sustainable systems that integrate human society with the natural environment. The program focuses on the key elements of ecological systems and the application of engineering design to soil, water, land, biological organisms, and contemporary ecosystems.
A maximum of 9 credits of coursework in the student's Major may be double counted with this Minor.
Required Courses (6 credits)
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| BREE 518 | Ecological Engineering. | 3 |
Ecological Engineering. Terms offered: Winter 2027 Concepts and practice of ecological engineering: the planned creation or management of a community of organisms, their nonliving surroundings, and technological components to provide services. Survey of applications such as constructed wetlands, aquatic production systems, green infrastructure for urban storm water management, environmental restoration. Taught cooperatively with a parallel course at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Online collaboration with an interdisciplinary, international team is an important component of the course. | ||
| ENVB 222 | St. Lawrence Ecosystems. | 3 |
St. Lawrence Ecosystems. Terms offered: Fall 2026 Integrative field biology course about the biodiversity and ecology of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems within the St. Lawrence Lowlands. Research projects about the natural history of the regional flora and fauna. Fundamentals of community, ecosystem and landscape ecology. | ||
Complementary Courses (12 credits)
6 credits from the following list:
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| ENVB 210 | The Biophysical Environment. | 3 |
The Biophysical Environment. Terms offered: Fall 2026 With reference to the ecosystems in the St Lawrence lowlands, the principles and processes governing climate-landform-water-soil-vegetation systems and their interactions will be examined in lecture and laboratory. Emphasis on the natural environment as an integrated system. | ||
| ENVB 305 | Population and Community Ecology. | 3 |
Population and Community Ecology. Terms offered: Winter 2027 Interactions between organisms and their environment; historical and current perspectives in applied and theoretical population and community ecology. Principles of population dynamics, feedback loops, and population regulation. Development and structure of communities; competition, predation and food web dynamics. Biodiversity science in theory and practice. | ||
| ENVB 410 | Ecosystem Ecology. | 3 |
Ecosystem Ecology. Terms offered: Fall 2026 Biotic and abiotic processes that control the flows of energy, nutrients and water through ecosystems; emergent system properties; approaches to analyzing complex systems. Labs include collection and multivariate analysis of field data. | ||
| ENVB 437 | Assessing Environmental Impact. | 3 |
Assessing Environmental Impact. Terms offered: Winter 2027 Principles and practice of Environmental Assessment (EA) in Canada and internationally. Exploration of issues surrounding impact assessment for sustainable development in different sectors, including their limitations. | ||
| ENVR 200 | The Global Environment. | 3 |
The Global Environment. Terms offered: Fall 2026, Winter 2027 A systems approach to study the different components of the environment involved in global climate change: the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and lithosphere. The interactions among these components. Their role in global climate change. The human dimension to global change. | ||
| ENVR 201 | Society, Environment and Sustainability. | 3 |
Society, Environment and Sustainability. Terms offered: Fall 2026 This course deals with how scientific-technological, socio-economic, political-institutional and behavioural factors mediate society-environment interactions. Issues discussed include population and resources; consumption, impacts and institutions; integrating environmental values in societal decision-making; and the challenges associated with, and strategies for, promoting sustainability. Case studies in various sectors and contexts are used. | ||
| ENVR 202 | The Evolving Earth. | 3 |
The Evolving Earth. Terms offered: Winter 2027 Formation of the Earth and the evolution of life. How geological and biological change are the consequence of history, chance, and necessity acting over different scales of space and time. General principles governing the formation of modern landscapes and biotas. Effects of human activities on natural systems. | ||
| ENVR 203 | Knowledge, Ethics and Environment. | 3 |
Knowledge, Ethics and Environment. Terms offered: Fall 2026, Winter 2027 Introduction to cultural perspectives on the environment: the influence of culture and cognition on perceptions of the natural world; conflicts in orders of knowledge (models, taxonomies, paradigms, theories, cosmologies), ethics (moral values, frameworks, dilemmas), and law (formal and customary, rights and obligations) regarding political dimensions of critical environments, resource use, and technologies. | ||
| SOIL 535 | Soil Ecology. | 3 |
Soil Ecology. Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. Exploration of the unique soil habitat for organisms with a focus on the variables that affect the abundance, diversity and interactions of soil biota and, in turn, their influence on soil physicochemical properties, biogeochemical cycles and other factors impacting ecosystem sustainability. Topics include survey of soil fauna, soil food webs, microbial ecology, biological carbon and nitrogen cycling, plant-soil interactions, and the effects of human activities and management on soil ecology, including synthesizing concepts and a critical analysis and interpretation of primary scientific literature in soil ecology. | ||
Note: ENVR courses have limited enrolment.
6 credits from the following list:
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| BREE 217 | Hydrology and Water Resources. | 3 |
Hydrology and Water Resources. Terms offered: Winter 2027 Introduction to water resources and hydrologic cycle. Precipitation and hydrologic frequency analysis. Soil water processes, infiltration theory and modeling. Evapotranspiration estimation methods and crop water requirements. Surface runoff estimation as a function of land use modifications. Estimation of peak runoff rates. Unit hydrograph. Design of open channels and vegetated waterways. | ||
| BREE 327 | Bio-Environmental Engineering. | 3 |
Bio-Environmental Engineering. Terms offered: Fall 2026 An introduction to how humans affect the earth's ecosystem and projections for the needs of food, water, air and energy to support the human population. Ecologically-reasonable coping strategies including biofuels, bioprocessing, waste management, and remediation methods. | ||
| BREE 416 | 3 | |
Terms offered: this course is not currently offered. | ||
| BREE 420 | Engineering for Sustainability. | 3 |
Engineering for Sustainability. Terms offered: Winter 2027 Principles and practices of engineering for sustainability. Emphasis on environmental, economic, social, management and policy factors that should be incorporated into sustainable approaches to engineering and design. Topics will include: sustainability metrics, systems thinking, stakeholder engagement, and leading change for sustainability within companies. | ||
| BREE 505 | Life Cycle Assessment for Sustainable Agrifood Systems. | 3 |
Life Cycle Assessment for Sustainable Agrifood Systems. Terms offered: Winter 2027 Examination of the methods for food system sustainability assessment and their trade-offs, focusing on conducting environmental life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, and an introduction to social life cycle assessment for agrifood systems (crops and livestock). Additionally, methods for trade-off analysis among the three sustainability dimensions – environment, economics, social – will be evaluated and applied to agrifood system optimization and sustainability decision-making. | ||
| BREE 509 | Hydrologic Systems and Modelling. | 3 |
Hydrologic Systems and Modelling. Terms offered: Winter 2027 Hydrologic cycle in the nature and how to quantitatively describe those processes using models. The fundamentals of hydrology including basic concepts, precipitation, snow and snowmelt, evapotranspiration, subsurface flow, infiltration and soil water movement, and runoff and streamflow. Equivalent attention to theories and hands-on practices on model application. How to set up and execute weather data driven physical based models, both at a point-scale and a watershed scale, to predict snowmelt, evapotranspiration, infiltration, soil water redistribution, subsurface drainage, runoff, and stream flow in hydrologic systems. | ||
| BREE 510 | Watershed Systems Management. | 3 |
Watershed Systems Management. Terms offered: Fall 2026 A holistic examination of methods in watershed management with a focus on integrated water resources management (IWRM). Topics include: integration, participatory management, water resources assessment, modeling, planning, adaptive management, transboundary management, and transition management. | ||
| BREE 533 | Water Quality Management. | 3 |
Water Quality Management. Terms offered: Fall 2026 The water phases of terrestrial ecological systems and the processes that link them. Physical, chemical, and biological properties of water, and water quality standards. The fate and transport of pollutants in rivers and streams, lakes, and wetlands. Methods to quantify soil carbon and nitrogen cycle to predict nutrient leaching. Impacts of human activities (e.g., agricultural drainage) on water quality and measures to improve drainage water quality. Assess the effectiveness of proposed engineering measures or management practices in improving or maintaining water quality of a real site/water body using numerical methods or a computer modelling approach. | ||