Fire Ecology Seminar Lectures, guest lectures, and student presentations dealing with the natural role of fires in wildland communities, fire adaptations in plant and animal species. Human responses to wildland fires and prescribed fire applications. Additional credit for in-depth mathematical analysis of a particular topic. Ecosystems of Puerto Rico Field examination of a variety of tropical ecosystems in Puerto Rico including cloud forest, montane rain forest, tropical dry forest, mangroves, and coral reefs. Field study supplemented by appropriate readings from the scientific literature and expert presentations.
Students are responsible for round-trip airfare and personal expenses.
Emphasis is on practical work in evaluating projects, dealing with risk and uncertainty, analyzing regional impacts, valuing nonmarket resources, and exploring sustainability of managed forest. Photo Interpretation and Photogrammetry Practical and conceptual presentation of techniques for using remote sensing, specifically aerial photographs, in natural resources. Applications to forestry, wildlife, land-use planning, earth sciences, soils, hydrology, and engineering. Hands-on image processing including filtering, image display, ratios, classification, registration, and accuracy assessment. GIS as it applies to image-processing.