Instructor: Peter White (UNC – Chapel Hill)

The goal of this class is to review all the biological knowledge that is essential to conservation, ranging from genetics to populations to ecosystems and from small scales to broad ones, while focusing on the diverse and complex landscape of the Southern Appalachians.  Some of the material may be review from general biology or ecology classes, albeit with new conservation-themed examples, and some will be new to you because the work in question is only carried out in a conservation context.  Examples of competencies gained are the following: ability to evaluate the relative contributions of niche-environment relations and spatial-temporal constraints to biodiversity patterns and the consequence of these patterns for conservation design; understanding how genetic diversity is affected by effective population size; understanding how extinction risk is affected by the size, number, and distribution of populations; ability to construct, in a conceptual sense, population and metapopulation models; understanding concepts of ecosystem dynamics, resistance, resilience, and adaptability; ability to critically analyze modern conservation issues like invasive species, climate change and change in other ecological processes, habitat loss and fragmentation, trophic cascades, ecological restoration, and ex situ conservation.  The key competency to gain is to think critically about scientific findings, to see where uncertainties and opportunities for new research lie, and to use the findings of biological science as a conservation tool box.

Prerequisites: General biology and ecology courses or permission of instructor

Click here for the syllabus.