1. Handbook
  2. Graduate Diploma in Science
  3. Informal Specialisation
  4. Physical Geography

Physical Geography

Graduate Diploma in ScienceInformal specialisationYear: 2026

You’re viewing the 2026 Handbook:
Or view archived Handbooks

Overview

A specialisation in Physical Geography will provide students with skills and conceptual frameworks needed to understand the processes that shape the world around us. It brings many disciplines together to examine big picture issues, like climate change and inequality. In Physical Geography, particular attention is given to understanding the spatial and temporal scales of landscapes, their history and their biota, and the processes by which these vary.

Geography is a field-based discipline, enabling students to gain hands-on research experience via practical laboratory classes, field trips, and group project work, whilst also being provided opportunities to develop critical intellectual skills, transferable professional skills, a sense of public responsibility and higher research degree capacities.

Completion of the Graduate Diploma with a specialisation in Physical Geography will allow students to enter careers in the following areas: research institutions, teaching, environmental sciences, resource management and planning, environmental consultancies, industry and all levels of government.

The Graduate Diploma (Physical Geography specialisation) also provides a pathway into the Master of Geography.

Intended learning outcomes

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:

  • Demonstrate a sound understanding of the major disciplinary areas that comprise Physical Geography and a deep practical and theoretical understanding of at least one specialist area;
  • Explain with the natural processes that control the formation and maintenance of Earth's natural landscape systems and . These understandings will be enhanced by a deep appreciation of the impacts of humans on landforms and the biota they support;
  • Utilise analytical skills appropriate to a range of field and laboratory techniques that enable graduates to address significant ecological and environmental problems at a range of scales from the cellular to the global;
  • Demonstrate skills in the planning, safety and budget-setting for field-work, as well as more disciplinary-specific techniques such as sampling, mapping, remote sensing, and field classifications and identifications;
  • Demonstrate the capacity to work and study in small groups and to communicate results verbally and by written assignments, including field diaries, laboratory reports and group presentations;
  • Discern that while scientific techniques and knowledge are fundamental to investigating the natural world, the implementation of solutions to environmental problems requires an understanding of science within the context of current politics, planning and societal diversity.

Last updated: 26 November 2025