Covers water quality parameters and their measurement, contaminant classes and behavior, sources and pathways, regulatory standards, and the design of monitoring programs.
Source attribution is treated as the central practical difficulty. An estuary receives inputs from every land use in its catchment, mixes them, and redistributes the result according to its circulation. Concentration at a station is therefore a statement about transport as much as about sources, and the course works through the survey and tracer methods used to separate the two.
Laboratory and field work covers sampling design, chain of custody, standard analytical methods, and quality assurance. Students collect and analyze samples from the Aldwych estuary and are assessed on whether their results would survive scrutiny.