HSC Earth and Environmental Science case studies
HSC Earth and Environmental Science · Put your knowledge to work in context.
The Higher School Certificate Earth and Environmental Science course is a senior secondary science subject in New South Wales, typically taken in Years 11 and 12. It suits students who want to understand how the geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere interact, and who are interested in resource use, environmental management and the science behind sustainability decisions. The HSC Earth and Environmental Science case studies are 5 cases and about 2,615 words.
1Salinity and the Irrigation Block
A 240-hectare irrigation district sits on a clay-loam floodplain. For 30 years growers applied about 9 ML/ha per year of irrigation water with an electrical conductivity (EC) of 0.4 dS/m.
573 words, about 3 min2The Dredged Estuary and the Oxygen Crash
A coastal estuary receives treated sewage from a town of 60,000 people and runoff from 4,000 hectares of cleared catchment. Summer monitoring shows surface chlorophyll-a rising from 3 to 28 µg/L over six weeks, a diatom bloom dominated by a single species, followed by a crash.
506 words, about 3 min3Reading the Rock Record at the Quarry
A quarry exposes a 120 m sequence. The lower 40 m is dark, fine-grained rock with graded beds, ripple marks, and a radiometric age of 380 ± 5 Ma.
517 words, about 3 min4The Reforestation Carbon Trade-off
A 5,000-hectare catchment is being considered for reforestation to earn carbon credits. It currently supports native grassland and shrubland, grazed by 3,000 sheep, and contains 12 km of eroding gullies feeding a reservoir that supplies a town of 40,000.
531 words, about 3 min5The Cyclone, the Delta, and the Data Gap
A low-lying deltaic village of 1,200 people is exposed to storm surge. Tide gauge records from a station 40 km away show mean sea level rising 3.2 mm/year over 40 years, but the record has gaps totalling 6 years and the gauge was moved 300 m inland in 1998.
488 words, about 2 min