THE TOUGHEST CHALLENGES most postgraduates are likely to face are computer fatigue, finishing their theses on time and defending their papers before a board of experts.
But for the students who take on environmental science-related courses, the potential challenges become more adventurous.
Field trips to climate change hot spots, extreme weather locations and toxic recycling sites are necessary for research to back up the more commonplace charts and figures, but add to the already copious workload.
The research is cutting edge as well, with some of the students at the University of Hong Kong discovering microscopic new species, called extremeophiles, as part of their studies into the origins of life.
'These are organisms that live in extreme environments where we would not normally expect to find things living,' said Jonathan Aitchison, head of the university's department of earth sciences. Professor Aitchison said his students went all over the world as part of their studies and would be returning to Tibet next year to continue their research.
'We teach students how the Earth works,' he said. 'We look at how the Earth changes and we look at how the climate has changed in the past to predict how it may change in the future.'
One of the earth science postgraduates going on the field study is Alan Baxter, who is studying Tibetan geology and, in particular, what happened when India collided with Asia that led directly to the creation of the Himalayas and resulted in altered weather patterns.
