Geography 111: "Biogeography and Global Ecology"

Biogeography and Global Ecology is the science that seeks to identify and understand the past and present spatial distributions of plants, animals, and biodiversity on earth. Particular emphasis is given to developing an integrative framework to explaining how physical and biotic processes have and will continue to contribute to geographic variation in life on earth. The influence of people, and future climates, as agents of change are an important focus of study.

For the uninitiated, biogeography and global ecology may appear to be an amalgamation of topics taken from geology, biology, climatology, oceanography, and other bio-physical sciences. Biogeography and Global Ecology certainly covers parts of these topical areas, but biogeography as a science is unique.

Biogeography and Global Ecology does not simply discuss environmental and biological processes or factors that control species distribution and abundance patterns. The field, instead, concentrates on integrating theory and data from evolution, ecology, population biology, and the Earth sciences to explain geographic patterns in species and species assemblages. As such, it is a branch of both geography and biology. Drawing sharp boundaries between biogeography and other disciplines is counter productive because biogeography has its own theoretical and empi4rical approaches that readily incorporate conceptual and factual advances in allied sciences.

As in all geography, five recurrent themes are reflected in the content of biogeography: and global ecology place, region, scale, movement, and human-environment relationships. Biogeographers are not only interested in where species are, but also they want to know the answer to such questions as:

What role does geographic variation in climate, topography, and interactions with other organisms including people play in limiting a species distribution?
How have historical events such as continental drift, and ice ages shaped a species distribution?
Why are plants and animals in isolated places such as Madagascar so distinctive?
Why are there so many more species in the tropics than at temperate or arctic latitudes?
How has fragmentation of regions and landscapes by human activity affected species diversity?
How will the distribution and abundance of key species change under an altered climate?

Biogeography and global ecology is a unique and synthetic field of science. This course provides a unique learning experience that students can get in no other discipline-one that takes an integrated view and makes the natural environment relevant.

Professor: Dr. Alan Taylor