ENVIR 450B – Growing Stuff: Ecology of Resource Extraction Systems will be taught in Spring 2011 by Stevan Harrell.  Want to get an idea of what the class will be like?  You can check out his class website from last year (which will be updated at the beginning of Spring 2011):

http://faculty.washington.edu/stevehar/resourcehome.html

Please note: The 3 required full-day field trips will be on Saturday, April 16, May 7 and May 28.

This is a field-, reading-, and writing- intensive course on how humans modify and manipulate ecosystems to produce useful resources. Throughout, we emphasize a systems perspective, closely examining the ecological, economic, and political effects of the elements of each system on one another. We also pay attention to analysis of systems at different scales of space, time, and complexity. Our specific subject matter encompasses ecosystems in Washington State that are modified to produce and extract three kinds of resources: biofuels, shellfish, and milk products. Each three-week unit, including an all-day Saturday field trip, focuses on one of these three resource types. For each unit, students are required to read a series of articles, comment formally in class on some of them, go on the field trip, keep and turn in a field journal, and write a topical essay on an assignment dealing with problems of that type of resource system.