CES, Week 10: Putting the wraps on Aquatic Ecosystems

All good thigns must come to an end. We’ll take our final data on the aquatic ecosystems. Don’t be sad, we’ll take out first data on the soil decomposition chambers, More projects on the way for next week. Keep up the effort level. I am quite pleased with this class.

Monday-Tuesday: Fall Break

Wednesday: Final Data collection on aquatic mesocosms (don’t pour them out)

Thursday: examination of aquatic mesocosm oxygen content

Friday: continue examination of aquatic communities, construction of ecosystem diagrams, and aquatic eltonian pyramids.

CES, Week 9: Playin’ In The Dirt

I guess I could ask you all point blank, “What do you think of this class?” I’m curious. I am enjoying it. I’m able to try some different teaching strategies and spend time one some fairly straightforward and interesting projects.

This week we’ll continue with ecosystems. Soil will occupy most of our time, but we’ll take one day to get back into our Aquatic mesocosms

Monday: Soil Texture and Soil Porosity. Prepare for Soil Percolation

Tuesday: Soil Percolation, Soil Chemistry

Wednesday: Monitor Aquatic Biomes, Set Up Berlese Funnels on leaf litter

Thursday: Set Up Decomposition Experiments

Friday: Wrap Up Soil Data Collection

APES: Week 6 Schedule

alright, kids, the week of playing in the dirt is over. Hope you liked it. More importantly, hope you learned something.

Get ready for a week of Reardon lectures. Ecosystems! This is what I came to Alabama for. Oh yeah, Elton, Lindeman, Odum…we’ll look at all their ecosytem models. We’ll get into gross primary productivity and net primary productivity. Given our pace, we may be talking about community ecology before the end of the week. We’ll definitely be sampling the leaf litter for critters. I can’t wait.

Monday: Geology 101a and soil science

Tuuesday: Ecosystems 1: History of ecosystem science

Wednesday: Ecosystems 2: ecosystem models and ecological efficiency

Thursday: Ecosystems 3: Biogeochemistry

Friday: Community Ecology 1