Short Course Description
Background:
While global climate change is of increasing concerns worldwide, the rapidly?emerging field of Climate Change Ecology is just beginning to address how organisms and ecosystems will respond. This course will focus on the physical science perspectives on global environmental change by discussing the causes, mechanisms, and impacts of major types of global changes (climate and land-use changes) on ecosystem structure and functions. The course will emphasize how integrating ecology, physiology, behavior, and evolution is enabling understanding past responses and predicting future responses at various scales. The course will consist of lectures, student presentations and discussion of readings, and two field trips to visit climate change research stations and laboratories in Israel. Emphasis will be placed on the recent literature, but will also include readings from various sources and guest lectures.
This course will rely on both frontal lectures, reading of primary scientific literature, group participation and discussion. Efforts will be made to provide students with some important ?fundamentals? and generally deepen our understanding of climate change ecology.
Course Learning Goals:
The goal of the course is to critically evaluate information about the causes and biological
consequences of the major types of global change as a result of human activities.
1. To gain a broad understanding of the mechanisms by which microorganisms, plants, animals, communities, and ecosystems are responding to climate and land-use change
2. To directly engage with the primary literature and identify topics at the frontier of global change research
3. To enhance skills in communicating science and to become acquainted with methods and tools for predicting future responses to global climate change.
4. To gain knowledge on what changes would be needed to stabilize or reverse current trends and how science is (or is not) translated into policy.
Course Prerequisites: Ecology (0455.1809.01 ? Life Sciences faculty) or Introduction to Ecology (0910.1500.01 ? Porter School). Students that have not taken these courses or equivalent will not be accepted
Field trips:
Two field trip are planned: Friday, March 22nd , 2024. It will focus on experimental climate change research on terrestrial ecosystems. The first field trip will include a visit to study sites in the Judean Hills. Friday, April 12th, 2023; the second field trip will include a visit study sites in desert ecosystems in the northern Negev. Students will be exposed to real climate change experiments in terrestrial ecosystems. Issues about climate change along environmental gradients will be discussed while travelling in the bus. Introduction to main vegetation and soil types will be discussed at each field trip stop while considering climatic gradients. A field report with a task will be requested. Students can do the report in couples and will be based on elements discussed during the field trip. Full instructions will be given towards the field trip. The field trips are planned for Fridays, and will last around six or seven hours (departure from the university at 8:00 hs and return around 14:30 hs). Attendance to the field trips is compulsory. Students not attending the field trip by a non-justified reason will regrettably left out of the course.
Full Syllabus
