EPOB 4170
Understanding environmental problems; making effective use of technical information; of general applicability to environmental problems; aimed at the first party participant.
This course will explain why math, physic and chemistry are essential to ecosystem studies in so far as they define our boundaries, requirements and expectation. We will be interested in balances within ecosystems. Specifically, we will examine the water, energy, and nutrient balances of terrestrial ecosystems. We will explore the effects that litter decomposition rates, the origin and decomposition of soil organic matter and plant soil interactions have on realized photosynthesis. We will study the role of both herbivory and fire in the carbon and nutrient balances of ecosystems. We will briefly investigate the differences between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Finally, we will view ecosystems as mechanistic components of the biosphere with the use of general ecosystems models, generation of global budgets and estimates of atmospheric feed-backs. We will conclude with a look at anthropogenic intrusions into nutrient cycles.