6 EC
Semester 1, period 2
5042BIGC6Y
Biodiversity contributes to the proper functioning of ecosystems and is essential for a sustainable future of our earth. It also contributes to food production, biotechnology, and medicine, and is therefore of fundamental importance for our human well-being. However, biodiversity has changed dramatically, both in the geological past as well as more recently due to the impacts of modern humans. The resulting environmental changes (both natural and human-driven) take place at different spatial and temporal scales, but the mechanisms and processes driving biodiversity change are often poorly understood. For instance, species and ecosystems respond to changing environmental factors such as climate, soil, and land use, resulting in a complexity of biotic and abiotic interactions. This makes an understanding and the prediction of future biodiversity changes extremely challenging. To understand the effects of future global change on biodiversity, insights from past and currently observed changes, experiments, biological theory and modelling are used to predict how and why the biosphere changes. This encompasses many different disciplines, including paleoecology, climate change biology, biogeography, molecular ecology, and climatology. The course concentrates on patterns and processes of biological diversity at species, population and ecosystem levels, and covers biodiversity (past, current and future patterns), threats and ongoing changes, biogeography, biodiversity data, and past, recent and future global change). Course material will be covered by lectures, readings, and discussions of scientific articles. In addition, the management of data and visualization of biodiversity in space and time is performed with Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The course therefore allows students to get up-to-date with knowledge and skills in biodiversity and global change research of the twenty-first century.
Biogeography (5th edition), Lomolino, M.V., Riddle, B.R. & Whittaker, R.J. (2016), Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, USA.
Powerpoint presentations and other materials will be provided via Canvas.
Students will obtain a basic knowledge of what biodiversity is and how it is distributed in space and time. Moreover, they will apply their knowledge to ask research questions which can then be addressed with data and GIS visualization. Students will also learn to comprehend, present and critically assess scientific literature and to present research projects to the class. At the end of the course, students are expected to be able to (1) describe and summarize patterns of biodiversity and environmental change, (2) compare and discuss hypotheses regarding underlying natural and human-made drivers of biodiversity, (3) handle, visualize and present spatial biodiversity data, and (4) present, critically evaluate, discuss and put into perspective the evidence of biodiversity and global change from the primary scientific literature. More specifically, students will be able:
Part I: Biodiversity
Part II: Global change
Computer practicum
Paper discussions
| Lectures & werkcolleges | 40% |
| Practical | 25% |
| Self study (incl. literature reading, presentation and exam preparation) | 35% |
Activity | Number of hours |
Computerpracticum | 28 |
Hoorcollege | 40 |
Tentamen | 4 |
Vragenuur | 2 |
Werkcollege | 24 |
Zelfstudie | 58 |
Zelfstudie | 12 |
Programme's requirements concerning attendance (OER-B):
Additional requirements for this course:
Attendance at lectures is highly recommended because the material from the lectures will form the basis for the final exam. Knowing the material from the lectures is imperative to pass the course, but additional readings are required to perform excellent. Seminar-like lectures and active work parts (‘werkcolleges’) will be spread in between the lectures, and all of those are mandatory and obligatory. Attendance and participation during practical components (computer practicum and paper discussions) is also mandatory/obligatory (from Teaching and Examination Regulations). Any absence has to be discussed with the course organizer before the obligatory course parts and will involve additional homework to compensate for the parts that were not attended.
| Item and weight | Details |
|
Final grade | |
|
60% Tentamen | |
|
10% Paper discussions | |
|
30% Computer practicum |
For at least twenty working days after the announcement of the results of a written examination, the student can, on request, inspect his/her assessed work, the questions and assignments set, as well as the standards applied for marking. The place and time will be announced via Blackboard (from Teaching and Examination Regulations).
The computer practicum will be used to assess the application and comprehension level of students, especially in terms of handling and visualizing biodiversity data as well as presenting and summarizing the results of a project. Two assessments will be performed for the computer practicum, one based on daily exercises and the other one based on a poster presentation at the end.
The paper discussions will serve to assess the presentation, comprehension, discussion stimulation and evaluation level of the students, especially in regard to understand, present and critically evaluate primary scientific literature in biodiversity and global change research. Given the educational level (3rd year BSc students), the assessment of the knowledge, comprehension and presentation level will be given more weight (3/4) than the assessment of the evaluation level (1/4). In general, 10 scientific papers (from high-profile journals such as Nature, Science etc.) are selected by the course organizer and handed out to the students. Students are assigned to groups (3-4 students in each group, 10 groups in total) and each group has to read, comprehend and critically evaluate one original scientific paper (including its supplementary material) and read and comprehend another paper to prepare for the course group paper discussions. For task 1, each student group then has to make a presentation about the content (topic, questions, hypotheses, methods, results) and a critically evaluation of the paper (related to purpose, question, information, concepts, assumptions, inferences, and point of view in the paper), followed by a discussion among all course participants. This should cover max. 30 min in total for one paper/group, incl. a presentation of the content and critical evaluation (10-12 min) and a subsequent group discussion (18-20 min). For task 2, each student/group has to prepare questions for the discussion of another paper and assess the presentations of the other student group. This will be done by filling out an assessment form.
The 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' applies to this course. This will be monitored carefully. Upon suspicion of fraud or plagiarism the Examinations Board of the programme will be informed. For the 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' see: www.student.uva.nl
| Weeknummer | Onderwerpen | Studiestof |
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| 8 |
The schedule for this course is published on DataNose.
Maximum of 40 students. The lectures, presentations and written assignments in this course will be in English. The teaching is also in English. The course requires that the student has his/her won laptop (laptop college) with a Windows operating system. ArcGIS has to be installed by the student using a 1-year (free) student license (http://www.gis-studio.nl/index.php?page=software).