Short Course Description
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 emphasize on the biological aspects of global climate change. 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 lecturers of guest leading climate change researchers.
This course will rely on both lectures, reading of primary scientific literature, student presentation and discussion. Efforts will be made to provide students with some important ?fundamentals? and generally deepen our understanding on 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/sea-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.
Full syllabus is to be published
