Ecology: Linking People and Nature (with emphasis on the Turkana Basin)

Catalog description

With the world’s longest sequence of datable deposits containing fossils of our ancestors, eastern Africa is the ideal place to examine humans’ changing relations with our environment. This course familiarizes students with diverse ecological settings in the region today through tours and field exercises in highland forests, low-altitude grasslands, and lacustrine and riparian settings. Students learn various methods for paleoenvironmental reconstruction, and practice integrating different kinds of paleoenvironmental evidence in the field and laboratory facilities at TBI-Turkwel, Kenya. Examining modern vegetation and fauna in central and northwest Kenya shows students how human actions can degrade or conserve environments and resources in eastern Africa today.