News about the REACH IGERT
Fall 2009, core course
Multidiscplinary approaches to rapid environmental change
PBG 250A, CRN 34474 (4 units)
T,Th 10:30-11:50 and F 1:10-2:00
2320H Storer Hall
Ted Grosholz, lead instructor;
Carole Hom, coordinator
This is the first part of a two-quarter sequence in which students will gain exposure to a range of science and social science disciplines examining rapid environmental change. Students will be exposed to various disciplinary approaches to describing the responses of the natural and human spheres to the rapid environmental change of human provenance. These responses include organisms and ecosystems subject to rapid environmental change as well as the human endeavors and institutions that respond to those changes. We will focus on water as a linkage among California species, communities and ecosystems as it moves from the upper watersheds of the Sierras through the estuaries to the Pacific Ocean. Rapid environmental change is predicted to affect substantially California waters from the continental divide to the continental shelf, from summit to seamount, and from couloir to canyon as well as the people and populations that depend on these.
For more information, contact Carole Hom, clhom at ucdavis dot edu.
2009 Mercer Award of the Ecological Society of America
REACH PI Sharon Strauss and her former grad student (and BioInv IGERT associate) Rick Lankau received the 2009 Mercer Award from the Ecological Society of America. Congrats Sharon and Rick! Details in the press release
Monique Borgerhoff Mulder's research profiled in the NYT
read the article
Spring 2009, seminar
Responsible Conduct of Research for Environmental Scientists
ECL 290, CRN 69930 (2 units)
Th 11-12:50, 2320H Storer Hall
Discuss issues in professional ethics with students in a seminar setting before you actually are confronted with them in real life. Led by Graduate Studies Associate Dean (and ecologist!) Ed Caswell Chen and Carole Hom (clhom@ucdavis.edu), with contributions from other faculty. Course topics will include statistics, data massaging and management; intellectual property: ownership, authorship, and money; manuscript reviewing; philosophical and practical considerations in mentor/mentee interactions; and the roles of scientists in society.
Winter 2009, core course
The Delta, peripheral canal, and the future of California.
PBG 250B, CRN 54448 (4 units) or
ECL 290, CRN 30013 (2 units)
M 4:10-6pm, 1130 Bainer Hall
F 10-11:50am, 127 Wellman Hall
Peter Moyle and Jay Lund, lead instructors; Carole Hom, coordinator
The focus of this class will be to provide an integrated view of Delta, its past, and its future, with a final debate on the social, environmental, economic, and political consequences of building – or not building – a peripheral canal. Assignments include a field trip, leading a discussion, writing a policy brief for a legislator, writing an op-ed, and participating in a debate on the Peripheral Canal.
For more information, download the tentative syllabus or email Carole Hom (clhom at ucdavis dot edu).
Fall 2008, core course
Multidiscplinary approaches to rapid environmental change
PBG 250A, CRN 84375, TR 9-10:20, 2320H Storer.
Sharon Strauss, lead instructor; Carole Hom, coordinator
This course offers a broad multidisciplinary introduction to human and organismal responses to rapid environmental change. Students will consider evolutionary and behavioral responses of organisms to changing environments, and human responses to environmental problems. Environmental change can encompass habitat loss and fragmentation, climate change, urbanization, and water regulation, and biological invasions. Human responses include considerations from environmental ethics, environmental justice, and communication to policymakers and non-specialists.
Specifically, PBG 250A will include lectures on climate change from the perspectives of geology, organismal biology, and conservation; species protection; environmental justice; ecosystem change and environmental ethics; cultural evolution; and communicating research to the public (note that PBG 250B, offered in Winter 2009, will integrate environmental history, economics, policy, management, and decision-making in the context of ecological impacts of changes to the California Delta).
For questions about PBG 250A, contact Carole Hom, the course coordinator, at clhom at ucdavis dot edu.
top: Mono Pass, ©Marc Hoshovsky
