Biodiversity and Conservation

This course examines the ways in which
biodiversity is conceptualized, measured, and
valued. This is also a course that explores how
biodiversity is threatened by human activity and
how humans are trying to prevent and even restore
biodiversity. Basic concepts of population,
community and landscape ecology are combined with
issues that arise from legal, economic, and
cultural/aesthetic perspectives. We will explore
conservation efforts at scales that range from
being very limited in space and that are species
specific to proposals that span continents and
multiple ecosystems. We will compare conservation
strategies that arises from habitat loss, habitat
fragmentation, pollution and climate change. At
the end of the course, students will be able to
place conservation efforts into contexts that
consider the specific causes of biodiversity loss
and the consequences of allowing the loss to
continue and potential costs, not exclusively
monetary, that often go along with fixing the
problem.