A Bird’s Eye View Of Climate Change

Announcing a new year-long program for Undergraduates interested in Investigating and Modeling the Potential Effects of Climate Change on Ecological Systems.

Are you interested in conducting natural resource and ecological field research?

Would you like to get paid to do field research in the Appalachian Mountains summer 2012?

Well here is your chance. Participate in a year-long learning community of undergraduates with the focus of providing a funded opportunity for undergraduate students to design and carry out field research. The three-course sequence will feature a combination of lectures, indoor and outdoor labs, group learning, and an extended field experience.

Read the article about the program that was published in the UGA Columns newspaper on 9/6/2011: Learning Experience: Year-long forestry course about global climate change combines classroom, field studies

This 2 semester program consists of two classes:

  • Spring 2012: FANR 4460: Modeling the effects of climate change on animal communities (4-credits).This course will expose students to the basics of global climate change science, climate models and modeling. Students will explore geospatial data and land surface imagery and techniques required to employ these data sources in ecological field studies. Students will then learn principles of model development and testing. Examples from ecology and other sciences will illustrate models as scientific hypotheses. Students will learn how to empirically fit, validate, and update models. Models will be used to guide the design of field experiments to test climate hypotheses, with an emphasis on southern Appalachian ecosystems.
  • Summer 2012: FANR 4480: Species response to climate change field study (6-credits). The objective of this field course is to gather field data to support ecological modeling of species responses to climate and potential climate change. The second part is computer laboratory-based where students will update models developed in the spring course. This course is primarily a paid field research experience conducted in the Southern Appalachians where students will conduct research projects developed in the spring semester class. Two months (May 15 – July 15) will be spent conducting fulltime field research on vegetation, insect abundance, and bird reproduction, followed by data analysis and writing. Two weeks will be spent subsequent to the field season analyzing results and developing the final papers and presentations. Students will receive a stipend and housing and transportation will be provided during the field season.

Up to twelve students will be selected to participate in all courses, including the paid summer field course. Because space and funding is limited for the summer course, and students who are interested in the summer course must participate in the full 2-course sequence, we are urging students who are interested in this exciting opportunity contact either Jeff Hepinstall-Cymerman (jhepinstall@warnell.uga.edu), Bob Cooper (rcooper@warnell.uga.edu), or Mike Conroy (mconroy@uga.edu).

If you are interested, download application form here. Space is limited – review of applications will begin October 15th, 2011

For more information, please contact Dr. Hepinstall-Cymerman, jhepinstall@warnell.uga.edu, (706)583-8097