Stable Isotopes in Ecosystems
(Biology 5470, 3 units)
9:10-10:30 a.m.
Tuesday and Thursday
Fall Semester 2006
location: moved to 210 ASB
| Instructor: Jim Ehleringer |
TA: There is no TA for this class
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Return to the Ehleringer Lab Home Page |
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Stable Isotopes in Ecosystems:
integrators, indicators, tracers, and recorders |
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Lecture |
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Reading |
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| Introduction | |||
| Concepts and natural variations in isotope abundance |
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| Analytical approaches to measuring stable isotopes (lab trip) |
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| Evaluating the water cycle and human impacts on water | |||
| Precipitation (or why is water in Hawaii heavier than in Utah?) |
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| Streams, lakes, and groundwater (nature's gradients) |
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| Where do plants get their water from? |
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| Evaporation processes in plants and animals |
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| Biological aspects of the carbon cycle | |||
| Photosynthesis and ecophysiological constraints (learning recorder rules) |
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| Ecological gradients impact carbon isotope distributions (environment integrators) |
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| Carbon dynamics in terrestrial ecosystems (a beautiful natural tracer) |
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26-Sep
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Problem Set due September 26 (submitted as PDF via the web) | ||
| Interpreting the nitrogen cycle and human impacts on nitrogen | |||
| Plants and microbes (and the impacts of fertilizers on ecosystems) |
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| Nitrogen dynamics in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems |
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| Exam (download data to prepare for exam) | |||
| Diet and trophic level dynamics | |||
| "You are what you eat": isotopes and animal diet (AKA "Your mother was right!) |
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| Nitrogen isotopes as indicators of trophic feeding levels (AKA carnivores revealed) |
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| Carbonates and enamels as dietary and environmental recorders |
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| Assessing landscape to global-scale ecosystem processes | |||
| Carbon dioxide and the carbon cycle (AKA an inconvenient truth) |
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| Carbon cycles in oceans (where all is revealed) |
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| Biosphere-atmosphere fluxes and water stress (how we identify sinks and sources) |
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| Environmental reconstruction and global changes | |||
| Short term: tree rings as terrestrial recorders (let nature record environmental history) |
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| Long term: ice cores and carbonates (climate records for the last 600 million years) |
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| Stable isotopes in keratin record movements of animals | |||
| Spatial analysis and reconstructing migration in birds (where did they come from?) |
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14-Nov
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Spatial analyses of microbes - food, locations, histories |
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16-Nov
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Exam (download data to prepare for exam) | ||
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21-Nov
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Spatial analyses of mammal movements - from whales to elephants | |
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| Stable isotopes in human ecology |
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| Ancestral and modern human diets and commerce patterns (anthropology lives!) |
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| Athletes, drugs, and drug testing - stable isotopes at work (Landis, attend this lecture) |
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| Now its your turn | |||
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5-Dec
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Student presentations (12 minutes PowerPoint presentations) | ||
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7-Dec
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Student presentations (12 minutes PowerPoint presentations) |