Applied Ecological Principles

Catalog description

The course examines and applies ecological principles to each student’s local landscape, wherever they are in the world. Students will explore the ecology in their local environment, learn to observe patterns and processes, ask ecological questions, apply theory, complete field sampling, and share and compare results with their colleagues in an online forum. Students will explore the geomorphological template (e.g., latitude, climate, topography, ecoregion, geology, hydrology) and cultural processes (e.g., anthropogenic land-use history) that help to explain the species they see in their locations. Using citizen science-based tools like iNaturalist and eBird, students will learn the local flora and fauna of their landscape. We will study and apply ecological principles across ecological scales: from the genetic and organismic to the population, community, and ecosystem, and explore ecological theories at each of these levels of biological organization in ways that are transferable across environments.