The University of Granada has launched the ‘Water and Land’ MOOC, a new educational initiative from AbiertaUGR focusing on historical irrigation systems, their heritage value and their relevance in the face of water and land-use challenges. The first edition of the course will begin on 13 April 2026, will last 75 hours and will offer the possibility of earning 3 ECTS credits.
The launch event was attended by Pedro Mercado Pacheco, Rector of the UGR; Elena Correa Jiménez and José María Martín Civantos, MOOC content coordinators from MEMOLab; Alberto Guillén Perales, Director of the Centre for Resource Production for the Digital University (CEPRUD); and Marisa García Arias, Technical Director of Multimedia Design and Production at CEPRUD.
Water and Land will explore how societies across the globe have managed water throughout history for irrigation purposes, and what we can learn from these systems today. From irrigation channels and qanats to terraced fields and complex irrigation communities, historical irrigation systems are living cultural landscapes that combine engineering, local ecological knowledge and social organisation. Throughout the course, we will analyse the multifunctionality of these systems—productive, ecological, social and heritage-related—and present current techniques and tools for studying them from a multidisciplinary perspective: archaeological and ethnographic methods, spatial analysis using geographic information systems, hydrological studies and soil analysis, amongst others.
A multidisciplinary team of 15 lecturers, from various national and international universities, will guide the learning process by providing complementary perspectives and case studies from different regions of the world. This course is an invitation to understand how natural resources such as water and land have historically been managed sustainably and how this knowledge can inspire responses to contemporary challenges of climate change, water scarcity and territorial adaptation.
Registration opens: 23/03/2026
MOOC start date: 13/04/2026
MOOC end date: 25/05/2026
Duration: 6 weeks (75 hours)
Modules: 5
ECTS credits: 3
Website: https://abierta.ugr.es/course/view.php?id=89
