ESCI 435/535: LANDSCAPE ECOLOGY

Fall Quarter, 2009

Instructor: Dr. David Wallin; Office: AH308; Phone: 650-7526; e-mail: david.wallin@wwu.edu
Text: None; readings from the primary literature will be available online OR placed on reserve in the Huxley College library. A few things may also be placed on reserve in the Main Library
Click here for the list of readings.

Optional Supplemental Text: (A copy of this text is available in the reserve reading room of the Main Library) Landscape Ecology in Theory and Practice by M. G. Turner, R.H. Gardner and R.V. O’Neill

Class Meets: MW, 12:00-1:50; ES413
Office Hours: MW 11:00 - 12:00, TF 2:00-3:00 (sign-up on office door) and by appointment.

Course Outline for Fall Quarter 2009

The purpose of this four-credit course is to provide an overview of the field of Landscape Ecology. No good textbook is available is this field. Several books come close and I will put these on reserve in the library as background material. A few of the readings will come from these texts, but most of the course will be based on papers published in scientific journals. Lectures and discussion will be based on the primary literature. The course requires a background in ecology. All students must have completed BOTH ENVR 325 and 340 or Biol 325 and 340 or equivalent courses at another institution.

Each two-hour class period will include about 1 to 1.5 hours of lecture with the balance of time spent discussing papers from the current literature. During our discussions I may call on three or four students to briefly (5 minutes max) summarize a paper from the recent literature that relates to the lecture topic (more about this below). All students will be expected to actively participate in the discussions.

Grading:	Undergraduates	Graduate Students
Mid-term exam	25%	25%
Final exam	30%	25%
Paper summaries	30%	20%
Term paper	--	10%
Annotated Bibliography	5%	5%
Class participation	10%	10%
Discussion Lead	--	5%

Grades: A >=93; A- 90-92; B+ 88-89; B 83-87; B- 80-82; C+ 78-79; C 73-77; C- 70-72; D+ 68-69; D 63-67 D- 60-62; F 0-59

Class Participation: I expect to learn a great deal from you this term and so do your classmates. I expect everyone to actively participate in all discussions. I recognize that some people are not as outspoken as others; some have a very hard time speaking out in class. This is something we all need to overcome. When you leave here and get a job (this has been known to happen), you will be judged to a large degree based on your ability to communicate with your peers. If you know you have a problem speaking out in class, please come see me.

If you are not in class, you deprive us of your insights. Although I hope you will be there for every class, everyone gets two unexcused absences; additional unexcused absences will have a major impact on your grade. Let me know if you have a good reason to miss a class (illness, family crisis, research, scientific meeting, a need to go to Stockholm to pick up your Nobel prize, etc.).

Paper summaries: Each week, you will be expected to find a paper from the recent literature that relates to the lecture topic(s) and assigned readings. At least five times over the course of the term, you will be expected to write a one-page summary of the paper you have read for that week. These summaries will be due at the end of class on Wednesday. When you hand these in, include a xerox copy of the first page of the paper, including the entire abstract and the URL if available. These summaries will be graded and I will use your best five grades when I calculate your final grade. Don't put this off until the end of the term! Under no circumstances will I accept a stack of five summaries turned in during the final week of classes! Under no circumstances will I accept more than one paper summary from you per week. At least two summaries must be turned in prior to the mid-term exam. My intent here is to even out your workload and mine as well. Even if you elect not to turn in a summary in a given week, I still expect you to find a paper and read it. During the discussions, I will call upon students at random to briefly (5 minutes max.) tell us about the paper that you have read. Your verbal summaries count as part of your grade. Reclusive individuals can expect to be called upon frequently.

Academic Dishonesty: There has been a substantial increase in the number of cases of Academic Dishonesty in recent years. For this reason, all faculty members have been instructed by the Registrar’s Office to provide students with explicit information about Academic Dishonesty. Briefly stated, lying, cheating and stealing will not be tolerated in any form. Actions of this type will result in severe consequences that could include a failing grade in the class and dismissal from the university. Hopefully, this does not come as a surprise to anyone. All students should review Appendix D, Academic Dishonesty Policy and Procedure in the back of the general bulletin for a more detailed discussion of what constitutes academic dishonesty. For more information see the WWU Plagiarism Information Web Site.

One particular category of academic dishonesty warrants special attention. I have encountered a number of cases of plagiarism on writing assignments in recent years. This seems to be particularly common on writing assignments that include summarizing or synthesizing the content of a scientific paper. In many cases, these cases of plagiarism may have been unintentional and actually result from poor work habits. Many students get into the very bad habit of lifting a section of text from a published paper with the intention of going back and revising this section of text prior to turning in their paper. Unfortunately, they sometimes forget to do this and end up turning in a paper that includes significant sections of text that are lifted directly from someone else’s work. This is plagiarism. If this sounds a lot like the way you typically approach a writing assignment, then you definitely need to make some changes in your work habits.

Annotated Bibliography: At the end of the term, you must provide me with an annotated bibliography of the papers you have found on your own each week. This should be turned no later than December 5 (the last day of classes). You do not need to include the papers that I assign. For each of these references, include a list of key words and a couple of sentences that summarize the paper. Submit a copy of this bibliography to by email. The file must be saved as MSWord file. If the paper is available online, please provide the URL address. In order to include hyperlinks to papers, you will need to save your file as in html or htm format. At the end of the term, I will compile all the bibliographies and make the completed list available to all of you on the web. I would like everyone to use a common format. This will make it easier for me when I compile everyone’s contribution. For this reason, please DO NOT get fancy with cute fonts, indents weird spacing or anything else. Please use the following sample format for your bibliography:

Cohen W.B. and T.A. Spies. 1992. Estimating structural attributes of Douglas-Fir/Western Hemlock forest stands from Landsat and SPOT imagery. Remote Sensing of Environment 41:1-17.
|forest structure, PNW, TM tasseled cap transformation, multivariate statistics, principle components analysis, PCA, texture, spatial statistics.

Iverson, L.R., R.L. Graham and E.A. Cook. 1989. Applications of satellite remote sensing to forested ecosystems. Landscape Ecology 3:131-143.
|GIS, monitoring, vegetation classification, forest structure and function, AVHRR, Landsat, TM, MSS, SPOT, review paper.

Turner, M.G. 1989. Landscape ecology: the effect of pattern on process. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 20:171-197.
|review paper, scale, simulation models, GIS, landscape structure, pattern, heterogeneity and disturbance, population models, movement and persistence of organisms.

There should be one blank line between each reference. You must use the | symbol at the beginning of your list of keywords. On my keyboard, this symbol is located below the backspace key. The list of keywords begins on a new line, just under the full citation.

(Click here for some hints on locating "new" papers using the SCIENCE CITATION INDEX)

(Click here for a partial list of relevant journals).

Term Paper (Graduate Students Only): The paper (about 10-15 pages) should provide a review of some aspect of landscape ecology based on a set of papers (6-12?) from the primary literature. All term paper topics must be approved by me no later than the date of the mid-term exam. You are also required to turn in an outline of your paper and a reference list no later than week seven. The papers are due the Friday before dead week. Please include the references from your review in your annotated bibliography (described above).

Discussion format/ Readings: The discussion will focus on one or two papers that are related to the lecture. Everyone should come to every class with something to say about the readings. I would strongly recommend that you come to class with two or three discussion points actually written down. Among the points that you should consider while reading are:

1. If it is a research article, what are the central questions or hypotheses that have been addressed? If it is a review paper, what does the author feel are the central questions that have, or have not, been studied?
2. Reading the primary literature is difficult. In most of the papers we read, there will be some sections that seem incomprehensible. One purpose of our discussions is to work together to decipher these difficult sections. If there is a section of a paper you didn't understand, then you should not hesitate to bring this up in class. You will quickly find out that you are not alone. Many others probably had difficulty with this same section. Someone in the class may be able to clarify this section, and there may be other sections of the paper that only you were able to decipher.
3. Do the data or arguments that are presented support the conclusions that are made? Are there errors in the use of methods, or incorrect interpretations, or are the data weak? Do you have another interpretation for the data? If you can see problems with the study, what would you have done differently? These are important points to consider. An important part of your development as a scientist is the capacity to critically evaluate a piece of research, but other things are MUCH more important!
4. Several other issues are much more important. The perfect scientific paper has not yet been written (but I am sure that each of you will someday write several perfect papers). Despite any shortcomings in the paper, ask yourself what you have learned from it! If you can’t think of anything at all, then you screwed up. Even the really awful papers have some shred of value to them! Go back and try again! Among the issues you should consider are: (a.) What are the significance of the results for our understanding of landscape ecology? (b.) Are the results contrary to traditional concepts or established knowledge or do they support and expand established knowledge? (c.) What do the results mean in terms of how we manage landscapes or how we manage ourselves? What land-use practice would you change based on these results? (d.) Perhaps most important of all, What would your do next to follow up on this work?

Discussion leaders: Graduate students will be expected to act as leaders for about three or four class periods. Discussion leaders should prepare a 10-minute introduction to the discussion of the reading(s) in which you provide the context for the topic and background information. You will need to look at some of the articles cited by the author or other articles in the same are to understand the topic fully. You might provide us with a short bibliography of related articles (if not already cited by the author of the readings). Do not summarize the reading during your introduction. Each of us have already read the paper! After your introduction, we will simply begin our discussion. Your role is to keep our discussion flowing. When there is a silence, bring up a new question. If someone makes a point and no one else responds, then you should either respond or bring up a new question. Near the end of the time, you could bring up any new points that have not already been discussed.

All discussion leaders should come in to see me at least one week prior to their assigned class. This will give us an opportunity to briefly discuss the material we will be covering and decide if we want to make any changes in the assigned readings. If we do want to use different readings, we need to make them available the week before (this will not be possible early in the term).

Tentative Class Schedule: We will definitely make changes to the lecture schedule as the term progresses. Check this schedule for changes! As the quarter progresses, I will also be making changes in the readings when I come across newer or more interesting papers. Note that newer doesn’t always mean better. We will be reading some very current papers and also some old classics. For each class, I will assign one or two papers from the primary literature. Some of these papers will be available online. For those that are not available online, a single paper copy will be available in a class notebook in the Huxley library. You will need to make your own copies of these papers. The class notebook will also include a paper copy of all illustrations used in my lectures, except those that come from books on reserve or from assigned readings. These illustrations should be available a day or so after each lecture. Feel free to prod me a bit on this if I get behind. There is a Xerox machine in the Huxley library so there is no need to remove the papers or illustrations from the library.

Last Updated: 9/24/09

(Click here for lecture notes and handouts)

Week	Date	Topic	Papers Click here for the full citation for each reading and links to papers available online.
0	Sept. 24	Organizational Meeting
1	Sept. 29	What is Landscape Ecology?	Urban, D.L., et al.. 1987 Turner, M.G. 2005a and 2005b.
1	Oct. 1	Landscape Metrics and Scaling Issues in LE	Miller et al. 2005, Gustafson 1998
2	Oct. 6	The Physical template I	Stephanson 1990, Urban et al. 2000
2	Oct. 8	The Physical template II	Reiners and Lang 1979
3	Oct. 13	Biotic Processes I	Watt, A.S.. 1947, Smith and Urban 1988
3	Oct. 15	Biotic Processes II	Urban et al. 1999
4	Oct. 20	Disturbance I	Knight and Wallace 1989, Miller and Urban 1999
4	Oct. 22	Disturbance II	Swanson et al. 1988
5	Oct. 27	Disturbance Regimes: The Natural Variability Concept	Parsons et al. 1999, Landres et al. 1999, Reeves et al. 1995
5	Oct. 29	Review Session
6	Nov. 3	Mid-term Exam
6	Nov. 5	Remote Sensing and GIS	Cohen et al. 1996, Lefsky et al. 2002
7	Nov. 10	No class
7	Nov. 12	Connectivity I: Introduction to Models	Gustafson, E.J. and R.H. Gardner. 1996; Belisle 2005
8	Nov. 17	Connectivity II	Tischendorf et al. 2001, Langlois et al. 2001,
8	Nov. 19	Landscape Genetics I	Manel et al. 2003, Holdregger et al. 2006.
9	Nov. 24	Landscape Genetics II	Cushman et al. 2006
9	Nov. 26	Thanksgiving Break: No class
10	Dec. 1	Implications of landscape patterns: Metapopulations and Communities	Pulliam 1988, Schumaker et al. 2004
10	Dec. 3	Ecosystem Processes in the Landscape: Hydrology Annotated Bibliography due no later than December 4.	Jones et al. 2000, Moscrip and Montgomery 1997
	Dec. 7-111	Final Exam Schedule

Click here for the list of readings and links to papers available online.

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