COURSES
The three planned courses outlined below will expand the toolbox of the quantitative ecologist and teach basics on global change ecology.
Basic R
Course description
The programming language R is a useful, open-source research tool for a variety of disciplines, and increasingly used in the field of ecology. In this introductory R course, I will teach the basics of how to program in R. This will benefit students in two ways: (1) programming principles used in R apply to other programming languages such as Matlab or C++; (2) learning how to perform statistical analyses on large data sets frees students up from considerable computational efforts that would otherwise occur when using software such as Excel.
Expected learning outcomes
The programming language R is a useful, open-source research tool for a variety of disciplines, and increasingly used in the field of ecology. In this introductory R course, I will teach the basics of how to program in R. This will benefit students in two ways: (1) programming principles used in R apply to other programming languages such as Matlab or C++; (2) learning how to perform statistical analyses on large data sets frees students up from considerable computational efforts that would otherwise occur when using software such as Excel.
Expected learning outcomes
- Learn how to write basic functions that can be applied to data sets
- Learn how to do basic statistical analyses (requires prior knowledge on basic statistics)
- Create figures using the basic plotting package in R.
Advanced R for ecologists
Course description
The prerequisite for this advanced course is "Basic R" described above. In this course I will expand upon the Basic R course by teaching students how to use R packages that are useful for an ecologist. These include packages such as 'vegan' and 'plyr'. Furthermore, the 'ggplot2' package is a package designed to create high-quality figures for publications. This course is essential for the flourishing ecologist.
Expected learning outcomes
The prerequisite for this advanced course is "Basic R" described above. In this course I will expand upon the Basic R course by teaching students how to use R packages that are useful for an ecologist. These include packages such as 'vegan' and 'plyr'. Furthermore, the 'ggplot2' package is a package designed to create high-quality figures for publications. This course is essential for the flourishing ecologist.
Expected learning outcomes
- Learn how to analyze subsets of data in large data sets
- Learn how to do ordinations on community data
- Learn how to perform multivariate analyses
- Create professional figures for use in publications
Climate Change
Course description
In this course I will discuss how climate has changed in the past, current state and future direction. Furthermore, I will discuss how organisms have been able to adapt to natural fluctuations in climate. Lastly, I will discuss the design and results from a variety of climate experiments, specifically the long-term ecological research (LTER) experiments and multi-factorial experiments such as Jasper Ridge Global Change Experiments. At the end of the course, students will write and present a proposal on research that they would like to conduct to answer how one (or more) climate change factor affect(s) their variable of interest.
Expected learning outcomes
In this course I will discuss how climate has changed in the past, current state and future direction. Furthermore, I will discuss how organisms have been able to adapt to natural fluctuations in climate. Lastly, I will discuss the design and results from a variety of climate experiments, specifically the long-term ecological research (LTER) experiments and multi-factorial experiments such as Jasper Ridge Global Change Experiments. At the end of the course, students will write and present a proposal on research that they would like to conduct to answer how one (or more) climate change factor affect(s) their variable of interest.
Expected learning outcomes
- Learn about causes of climate change (past and present)
- Learn basic information about Earth System Models
- Adaptations of organisms (mostly plants, soil microbes, birds and mammals)
- Learn about responses of organisms in climate change experiments, i.e. what are expectations for the future?
- Learn basic information about experimental design
- Enhance communication skills, both in written and verbal form
