Estuarine Ecology

Level: Graduate

Instructors: Kenneth W. Able and Gary Taghon

Course overview: (KWA and Gary Taghon to provide)

Textbooks:

The textbooks for this course are as follow. These can be purchased online or at many bookstores:

Gosner, K.L. 1999. A Field Guide to the Atlantic Seashore. Peterson Field Guide Series. Houghton-Mifflin Publ.

Robins, C.R., G.C. Roy and J. Douglass. 1986. A Field Guide to Atlantic Coast Fishes. Peterson Field Guide Series. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

General marine and estuarine reference texts include the following:

Bertness, M.D., S.D. Gaines and M.E. Hay, (Eds.). 2001. Marine Community Ecology. Sunderland, Sinauer Associates.

Levinton, J.S. 2001. Marine Biology: function, biodiversity, ecology. Oxford University Press, New York.

Format:
This course will be strongly oriented toward field studies during the warmer, first half of the semester. In fact, several overnight field trips may be necessary. The details of these trips will be discussed at our first meeting and as planning proceeds. During the semester, each student will conduct an independent research project. A research report will be prepared in the style of a journal article. You will need to begin your report within the first two weeks of the semester, and plan to finish all of the field work by the middle of October. An abstract of the report will be distributed to all students prior to an oral presentation. In addition, we will be reading selected papers that deal with contemporary issues in estuarine ecology. Students will be required to lead discussions of these papers. All presentations will be evaluated by your peers and the instructors. The grade for this course will be determined from an evaluation of your final research report (75% of grade), presentations (15%) and participation (10%), both in the field and in the discussions.

Field Trips:
In the tradition of field ecologists, we will generally go on field trips as scheduled, except perhaps in the case of a hurricane. You can expect to get wet on any field trip. To this end, it is suggested that you always bring adequate field gear. The minimum that you will need: boots or old sneakers, shorts, raincoat, change of dry clothes, hat and/or sunscreen, sunglasses, clipboard and notepad. On overnight trips you will need to bring a sleeping bag and overnight bag.