This week's Nature has a news feature on re-wilding. I've only skimmed it, but it looks well worth reading carefully.
I decided to switch the order of the lectures on habitat fragmentation and ecological restoration. We'll start habitat fragmentation tomorrow after we finish our discussion of species invasions (starting with biological control). I suspect we won't finish everything on habitat fragmentation tomorrow, so we'll probably carry over some of the discussion to the lecture on the 9th of November.
The votes have been tabulated.
- 5 in favor of retaining the original schedule: assign on 11/11, due on 11/18
- 10 in favor of delaying: assign on 11/16, due on 11/30
- 3 either way
- Assign Project #3 on 11/16
- Regular due date: 11/30
- For those who are concerned about the lack of non-holiday weekend time: due date 12/7, but only if pre-arranged and only if (a) there aren't too many who want the later date &/or (b) those who want the later date don't mind not getting comments back until after they've handed in their final project.
I've posted notes on invasives from 2007. I expect to have newly revised notes available by late this afternoon or early this evening. They won't be a lot different from what you can find now, but there will be some updates and a few small changes. So if you want to print a copy, I suggest waiting until tonight or tomorrow. If you just want to look ahead for a preview of what we'll cover tomorrow, dive right in.
I've also posted links to several papers that you may find interesting.
By the way, think about your schedule over the next few weeks and think about when you'd like to have Project #3 due. I'd be willing to assign in on 14 November (instead of 9 November) and set the due date as 30 November, the Monday after Thanksgiving (instead of 21 November). That would give you two weeks (including Thanksgiving break) to work on it. But there's a very good chance I wouldn't be able to get graded papers back to you until Wednesday, 11 December -- just 2 days before your final project is due. Think about it, and we'll talk about it on Monday. I'll bring along ballots so you can vote for one alternative or the other privately.
I've also posted links to several papers that you may find interesting.
By the way, think about your schedule over the next few weeks and think about when you'd like to have Project #3 due. I'd be willing to assign in on 14 November (instead of 9 November) and set the due date as 30 November, the Monday after Thanksgiving (instead of 21 November). That would give you two weeks (including Thanksgiving break) to work on it. But there's a very good chance I wouldn't be able to get graded papers back to you until Wednesday, 11 December -- just 2 days before your final project is due. Think about it, and we'll talk about it on Monday. I'll bring along ballots so you can vote for one alternative or the other privately.
I've had a couple of questions about Project #2. In the interest of keeping everyone on the same page, I'm posting the questions and my answers to them here.
Is the selected historical target an appropriate one? Is this asking if a historical target is an appropriate method of the possible coarse filter strategies, or is it asking specifically about the choice of 1000 years pre-European settlement as a baseline for the specific types of ecological sites that should be present and their associated disturbance regimes?
What criteria can be used to determine whether the target is appropriate? Again, is this referring to the criteria for the selection of the historical target method from different types of coarse filter strategies, or why 1000 years pre-European settlement was chosen as the specific target for disturbance regimes and ecological sites?
The answer to this question depends on the tack you're taking on the first question. If you're going to argue that historical targets are never appropriate, for example, you'll need to explain what criteria you use in making that judgment. If, on the other hand, you argue that they picked the wrong historical target, you'll need to explain what criteria would have led you to pick a different one. If you think they got things just right, you'll need to explain what criteria led you to that judgment.
I had in mind the specific historical target mentioned in the plan, i.e., the 1000 years prior to European settlement. If you wanted to argue against that target you could argue that either (a) the specific time period that was chosen isn't the best one (you'd need to explain what time period you think would be better and why) or (b) it doesn't make any sense to pick a particular historical period as a target for rmanagememnt (you'd need to clarify whether you're making that argument for any management plan or just for this one, in particular).
Notes for the ecosystem management case study on Wednesday are now posted. We're returning to the western U.S. yet again. There's a lot more material posted than you can possibly read before lecture on Wednesday, assuming you have a life, but please read the Executive Summary carefully and look over a couple of the other things I suggest. Feel free to read or skim other parts of the plan if you're so inclined (and thank your lucky stars that I didn't make the 2nd project an analysis of this plan).
I recently learned about an event at UConn Avery Point that may interest some of you. If you're driving from Storrs, please carpool!
STORRS, Conn. - A symposium entitled "Indigenous People and The Environment"
is being held at 7 p.m. on Oct. 28, in the Branford House on UConn's Avery Point
campus. This event is part of a year-long Learning Community initiative called
"Looking for Indians: Indigenous People and the Environment," coordinated by
Campus Director of Academic Services Susan Lyons and Assistant Professor of
Anthropology Margaret Bruchac.
The Learning Community is centered on two INTD (inter-disciplinary) courses for
freshmen and sophomores taught by Lyons and Bruchac. In addition, twenty faculty
from thirteen disciplines have devised new teaching units to assist students in exploring
Native American issues from various disciplinary perspectives. For more information,
visit: http://www.averypoint.uconn.edu/avery_point/learning_community.htm
Bruchac serves as the Coordinator of Native American Studies at the Avery Point
Campus. For the symposium, she will be joined by panelists Sandy Grande (Associate
Professor of Education at Connecticut College), William Green (Director of the Logan
Museum), Syma Ebbin (Research Coordinator for the Connecticut Sea Grant Program
at Avery Point), Jason Mancini (Senior Researcher at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum
and Research Center), and Greg Stone (Adjunct Professor of Journalism at Avery Point).
The panelists will discuss how professionals from different backgrounds and academic
disciplines and Native American peoples approach these topics through a variety of
methods, and how conceptions of natural resources and sustainability and territory
shape our understandings of indigenous people, past and present.
For a map and directions, visit: http://averypoint.uconn.edu/avery_point/direct.htm
For more information:
Margaret Bruchac, (860) 405-9059, Margaret.bruchac@uconn.edu
Andre Felton pointed out a really nice article on ecosystem management that I've added to the suggested reading for Monday. My plan is still to focus on the south Florida example, but please take a look at Goldman and Tallis to see what we can learn from them that might cause us to think about south Florida differently.
I've fiddled with the lecture schedule to accommodate our recent excursion into landscape change and historical ecology. (Next time I teach this course, I'm going to change the sequence of lectures to match what we just did. I think it makes more sense this way than it did the way I originally scheduled it.) The lecture for next Monday is the ecosystem management lecture I had originally planned to get started two days ago, and the readings are the same. So we're actually a bit ahead.
