Teaching

CLIMATE CHANGE ECOLOGY
(FWE and ZOO 660)
Offered FALL semesters

Course Purpose, Goals, and Objectives

Modern climate change poses an unprecedented environmental threat affecting species and communities across all of Earth’s biomes. The biological impacts of climate change transcend political and jurisdictional boundaries and add significant uncertainty to the study, conservation and management of animal populations and natural resources. With a focus on wildlife ecology and management, the goal of this course is to provide an understanding of the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on organisms, species and communities. The course has three interconnected learning objectives for developing a comprehensive understanding of climate change ecology:

1. Gain a basic understanding of historic and future trends in climate change within an ecological context.
2. Identify the ecological and evolutionary impacts of climate change on natural communities and wildlife populations (including changes in phenology and ranges, community dynamics, and altered trophic interactions).
3. Gain experience in developing a climate change vulnerability assessment for a given species or community.

SPECIES DISTRIBUTION MODELING

(FWE 875)
Offered SPRING semesters

Species distribution modeling (SDM) is not just about making pretty maps. SDM is an important extension of modeling the ecological niche and a practical tool for exploring species-habitat associations, guiding current and future conservation planning, and estimating the impacts of future environmental change on species and communities. Despite a recent explosion of analytical techniques, the basics of SDM rely on extrapolating associations between species observations and predictors (e.g., land cover, climate) across space and/or time. This general approach relies on important biological and statistical assumptions that are often overlooked.

This seminar is designed for graduate students interested in learning more about the theory, practice, and implementation of modeling species distributions.  Each week student leaders will be responsible for summarizing two readings and develop questions for online discussion. Reading topics will cover the theory, application, and methodological aspects of SDM. In addition, we will go through a suite of exercises using program R. Students will apply knowledge of SDM theory and methods covered in the first section to analyze species distributions using multiple analytical techniques available as R packages, and data on species occurrences and relevant predictors (either sample or their own).