1 - 10 of 78 results for: ESS

The course will provide a basic understanding of how the ocean functions as a suite of interconnected ecosystems, both naturally and under the influence of human activities. Emphasis is on the interactions between the physical and chemical environment and the dominant organisms of each ecosystem. The types of ecosystems discussed include coral reefs, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, coastal upwelling systems, blue-water oceans, estuaries, and near-shore dead zones. Lectures, multimedia presentations, group activities, and tide-pooling day trip.

Southeast Alaska is often described as America's "last frontier," embodying a physical reality of the "pristine" that was once revered by the early romantics and founders of the modern conservation movement throughout Western North America. Although endowed with more designated Wilderness land than any other state, Alaska remains a working landscape: a mixed cash-subsistence economy where communities rely upon the harvest and export of natural resources. Here, ecosystem services remain tangible, and people living in communities that are unconnected by roads confront questions of sustainability on a daily basis. This field-based course introduces students to the global questions of land use change and sustainable resource management in the American West through the place-based exploration of Southeast Alaska. Focused on four key social-ecological challenges -- fisheries, forestry, tourism, and energy -- the coupled human-natural systems of Southeast Alaska provide a unique lens for students to interpret broader resource management and conservation issues. The curriculum balances field explorations and classroom lectures with community exploration in which students will engage with fishermen, hatchery workers, forest managers, loggers, mill owners, tour operators, tourists, city officials, citizens, and Native residents. Students will catch their own salmon, walk through old-growth and logged forests, kayak next to glacial moraines, and witness the impacts of human activities, both local and global, on the social-ecological systems around them. In the context of rapidly changing ecosystems, students will confront the historical, ecological, and economic complexities of environmental stewardship in this region. By embedding their experiences within frameworks of land change science, land-ocean interactions, ecosystem ecology, and natural resource management and economics, students will leave this course ready to apply what they have learned to the global challenges of sustainability and conservation that pervade systems far beyond Alaska. This course is co-sponsored by the School of Earth Sciences and takes place in Sitka, Alaska. Students arrange for their arrival at the seminar's point of origin; all subsequent travel is made possible by Sophomore College and the School of Earth Sciences.

This class is a seminar designed to prepare students participating in the 2019 Palau Seminar for possible research activities. Enrollment by approval of the instructors.

Preference to freshmen. Field trips to sites in the Elkhorn Slough, a small agriculturally impacted estuary that opens into Monterey Bay, a model ecosystem for understanding the complexity of estuaries, and one of California's last remaining coastal wetlands. Readings include Jane Caffrey's "Changes in a California Estuary: A Profile of Elkhorn Slough". Basics of biogeochemistry, microbiology, oceanography, ecology, pollution, and environmental management.

Humans, broadly construed, emerged as bipedal apes in the African mixed savanna-woodlands approximately two million years ago. From humble beginnings, humans have gone on to be become the ecologically dominant species in most biomes and grown to a global population in excess of seven billion. This dominance arises from a combination of features of the human organism including its extreme degree of behavioral flexibility and flexible social organization. The prima facie evidence of human evolutionary and ecological success raises a paradox with respect to recent work in economics and psychology which increasingly argues for pervasive irrationality in human decision-making in a wide array of behavioral contexts. How is it possible for an organism with such seemingly flawed software supporting decision-making to become the globally dominant species? We will use this contradiction as the launching point for understanding what rationality means in a broad ecological and cross-cultural context. What do we mean by `rationality¿? How do different disciplines conceive of rationality in different ways? Is there such a thing as a rationality that transcends cultural differences or is the very idea of rationality a cultural construction that is used to justify imperialism and other modes of paternalism? Are there systematic factors that promote or impede rational decision-making? The seminar will provide a gentle introduction to the formal approaches of decision theory which we will apply to an unusual array of topics centered on the subsistence and reproductive decisions of hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists, pastoralists, and agrarian peasants, in short, people living in face-to-face, subsistence societies. In addition to doing reading from a broad array of social and natural science disciplines around the topic of rationality, students will regularly engage in exercises to assess their own approaches to decision-making.

Three-week, field-based program in the Greater Yellowstone/Teton and Wind River Mountains of Wyoming. Field-based exercises covering topics including: basics of structural geology and petrology; glacial geology; western cordillera geology; paleoclimatology; chemical weathering; aqueous geochemistry; and environmental issues such as acid mine drainage and changing land-use patterns.

The economics of food production, consumption, and trade. The micro- and macro- determinants of food supply and demand, including the interrelationship among food, income, population, and public-sector decision making. Emphasis on the role of agriculture in poverty alleviation, economic development, and environmental outcomes. Grades based on mid-term exam and group modeling project and presentation. Enrollment is by application only and will be capped at 25, with priority given to upper level undergraduates in Economics and Earth Systems and graduate students (graduate students enroll in 206). Applications for enrollment are due by December 7, 2018. The application can be found here: https://economics.stanford.edu/academics/undergraduate-program/forms

Think controlling the earth's climate is science fiction? It is when you watch Snowpiercer or Dune, but scientists are already devising geoengineering schemes to slow climate change. Will we ever resurrect the woolly mammoth or even a T. Rex (think Jurassic Park)? Based on current research, that day will come in your lifetime. Who gets to decide what species to save? And more generally, what scientific and ethical principles should guide our decisions to control nature? In this course, we will examine the science behind ways that people alter and engineer the earth, critically examining the positive and negative consequences. We'll explore these issues first through popular movies and books and then, more substantively, in scientific research.

For undergraduates planning to conduct research during the summer with faculty through the MUIR and SUPER programs. Readings, oral presentations, proposal development. May be repeated for credit.