Course description not available at this time.

Description not available at this time

Description not available at this time

Most of the undeveloped land in the eastern U.S. that we rely on for public benefits and ecosystem services is owned by private individuals and families. Every day these private landowners are making decisions about who will own the land in the future and how will it be used. These decisions are the most significant driver of landscape change we face and will determine the public benefits that the land provides in the future (or doesn?t provide!).

This course provides students with an introduction to the discipline of landscape ecology, in both theory and practice, with specific applied examples related to the New England landscape. Landscape ecology focuses on the interplay between scale, spatial pattern, and ecological processes; specifically, how to characterize spatial pattern, where it comes from, why it matters, and how it changes through time and/or scale.

Over the last decade or more, there has been a detectable and growing dissatisfaction among students with the "status quo" in the way the society works. Students have witnessed terrorism, long-term war, a "great recession," the "Occupy" movement, effects of climate change and worse projections to come, and most recently, a global pandemic with a great impact on the economy. Many students are looking for models of hope and alternatives to the status quo on how society at local, regional and global levels might operate to collectively address problems.

This course examines the relationship between environmental conditions and social justice. Students will consider the social and political forces that differentially distribute vulnerability and contribute to health and socioeconomic disparities between populations. In this course, students will consider both local and global struggles for environmental justice, with case studies that focus on historically marginalized communities in the United States as well as in other countries.

The course will introduce students to analytical methods applicable to the evaluation of energy and climate problems and policy solutions. The methods include ethical analysis, spreadsheet analysis, life-cycle analysis, optimization and systems analysis.

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Advanced course in marine ecology, focused on how organisms interact with the ocean environment. We will explore Earth?s major marine ecosystems and investigate the ecological processes that create biological patterns within these habitats. We will use field techniques to collect biological data in local New England coastal systems. Together, we shall discover how marine ecology links to other disciplines such as chemistry, physics, and geography.