General Source for Current Environmental News

The Environmental News Network is a great way to stay current with breaking news around ecology, conservation biology, conservation, and environmentalism.

Online Textbooks

The Summer Ecosystem Experiences for Undergraduates field ecology course, offered by Columbia University, has a great diversity of informative pages with a great number of references included.  Particularly useful is the course site in the Atlantic Forest, Brazil.

BIODIVERSITY and CONSERVATION: A Hypertext Book by Dr. Peter J. Bryant, School of Biological Sciences, University of California, Irvine is an extensive online textbook with many relevant chapters.

The Virtual Nature Trail at the University of Pennsylvania, New Kensingston is a short, but very useful site for exploring the mixed deciduous forests of the Northeast.

Week 1 - Introductory Ecology 

Required Readings

A Special Moment in History - Bill McKibben (only the first half is required, but the rest is also great reading)

Experimental Science Projects: An Intermediate Level Guide - David Morano (a discussion of the scientific method)

Our Ecological Footprint - Dr. Mathis Wackernagel & Carmela Federico

Calculate Your Ecological Footprint: 13 Simple Questions Will Assess Your Use of Nature - Ritik Dholakia, Mathis Wackernagel, & Mario Gouvea

Recommended Readings

Cargo Cult Science - Richard Feynman (an irreverent exploration of the scientific method)

A Special Moment in History - Bill McKibben (only the first part is required, but the rest us also great reading)

Biological Diversity: The Oldest Human Heritage - Dr. Edward O. Wilson (download the PDF version by clicking on the link)

Greenwashing: A page from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA claims that some environmental conservation organizations are less than caring about animals. Be certain to read the "Report Cards" link on the right side of the page.

Required Readings

A Short Introduction to Population Viability Analysis - from RAMAS Ecological and Environmental Software company

Growth and Competition: Population and Metapopulation Dynamics from James A. Danoff-Burg. This provides a nice background to the basics of population growth in a non-mathematical fashion.

Exponential and Logistic Population Growth, from the University of South Carolina provides a background to the basics of both general types of population growth using mathematical symbols. This will help you to understand the models below.

XGROW Population Growth Models online - from the University of Toronto, Biology 150Y class. The applet can be used to model both the exponential and logistic population growth models to deepen your understanding of these models.

Recommended Readings

A Population Viability Analysis of the Monserrat Oriole - Deborah Brosnan and Steven Courtney of the Sustainable Ecosystems Institute.  This is a compelling application of these concepts to the actual conservation of an endangered species.

Required Readings

The SEE-U program has four pages that are useful in understanding how communities are composed. You can access the above pages by going to the Brazil homepage, then clicking on the "Biotic Processes" tab on the left menu, and then clicking on the Community Ecology, Producers, Consumers, and Decomposers pages. There are also several links on these pages for further in-depth reading.

The Division of Natural Resources of West Virginia has an interesting page discussing what is a community and how to define them.

A webpage hosted by an organization called Global Issues has an extensive discussion of the impacts of biodiversity on ecosystem structure & functioning.

Recommended Readings

The Basic Model of Island Biogeography page from the University of Windsor is a wonderfully comprehensive exploration of the idea with several scanned in graphs from the primary literature.  Be patient, it is a very slow load.

The Virtual Nature Trail at the University of Pennsylvania, New Kensingston has a quick description of the processes of Ecological Succession.

A challenging paper is available online from the primary literature entitled "Examination of the 'founder effect' in biodiversity research: patterns and imbalances in the published literature" from Drs. Robert France and C. Rigg, originally published in Diversity and Distributions vol 4, p. 77 1998.

Required Readings

Understanding forest dynamics for ecosystem management: A project to determine the long-term consequences of introduced pests on forest dynamics or read the entire report as a PDF at this site. from Manaaki Whenua of New Zealand has an interesting summary of the work being done at the center that addresses the relationship between these two factors, as well as many other research projects occurring there.  Be patient, as it is slow to load.

The Carbon Cycle, Climate, And The Long-Term Effects Of Fossil Fuel Burning by James F. Kasting, in Consequences: the Nature and Implications of Environmental Change online journal.

Roles of Animals in Ecosystems by Dr. Linda Deegan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute is the overview page of a course that she teaches. However, there is a great deal of useful and informative viewpoints and summaries as well.

Recommended Readings

Predicting the Impact of Climate Change on the Earth is available from the Climate Time Line, hosted by NOAA.

ASPEN GLOBAL CHANGE INSTITIUE has an extensive website with summaries of many ecosystem-level crises called EarthPulse NEWS.

The Eden Foundation has a site discussing Desertification - a threat to the Sahel

Required Readings

Solution to Global Species Extinction Crisis from Conservation International talks about the original conception of the conservation idea called Biodiversity Hotspots.
 
Biological Dynamics of Amazonian Forest Fragments project discusses the myriad of impacts of Brazilian rainforest fragmentation on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning that they have observed during the execution of the incredibly ambitious Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project. Definitely read the main page, but search around on the related pages as well, as this is one of the most important fragmentation conservation projects in the world.
 
Hawaiian Ecosystems at Risk (HEAR) discusses alien species and their impact on Hawaiian ecosystems from the USGS is a page that is focused on the impact of these exotics ons these islands. Hawai'i biota has the unfortunate distinction of being most heavily hit by introduced species, worldwide.
 
Ecosystem Services - Water Purification from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the publishers of the journal Science) is a great discussion of the mechanics of this important service best provided by a healthy ecosystem.

Recommended Readings

Impacts of Introduced Species in the United States by Dr. Daniel Simberloff, in Consequences: the Nature and Implications of Environmental Change online journal. I would put this is in the required readings list, but it is very long.  It is one of the better summaries of the impacts of exotic organisms that is available online.
 
InvasiveSpecies.gov is the central clearinghouse of information from the USDA and has many relevant links to information. However, there is an informative site that has been substituted for the Invasivespecies.gov for the time being, which is where this link will take you.
 
Chapter 14: EXOTIC INTRODUCTIONS from Biodiversity and Conservation: A Hypertext Book by Peter J. Bryant. This is mostly a rogue's gallery of important exotic species in North America and their impacts.
 
A Dynamic Model of the Spatial Spread of an Infectious Disease: The Case of Fox Rabies in Illinois by Drs. Brian Deal, Cheryl Farello, Mary Lancaster, Thomas Kompare, Bruce Hannon is a weighty, in-depth, scientific exploration of the spread of this illness among wild fox populations - culminating in the development of a model of its spread.
 
Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth by Lester R. Brown is a book that can be downloaded as a PDF file that discusses what we can do to minimize our impact on the Earth and the economic consequences of our current direction of growth and "development". Click on the download Eco-Economy link to download from this page.