LA 5204 is also offered in Spring 2025
LA 5204 is also offered in Spring 2024
LA 5204 is also offered in Spring 2023
LA 5204 is also offered in Spring 2022
Spring 2017 | LA 5204 Section 001: Metropolitan Landscape Ecology (46278)
- Instructor(s)
- Class Component:
- Laboratory
- Credits:
- 3 Credits
- Grading Basis:
- A-F only
- Instructor Consent:
- No Special Consent Required
- Instruction Mode:
- In Person Term Based
- Times and Locations:
Regular Academic Session
UMTC, East Bank
Peik Hall 155
- Also Offered:
- Course Catalog Description:
- Theories/principles of holistic landscape ecology. People, nature, and environmental stewardship in metropolitan landscapes. Urban areas, rural areas that provide food, water, energy, and recreation. prereq: BED accelerated status or LA grad student or instr consent
- Class Description:
- Our goal for the semester will be to develop your understanding about the theories and principles of holistic landscape ecology, and how this knowledge can help you understand more about people, nature, and environmental stewardship in metropolitan landscapes. In this class, metropolitan landscapes include not only urban and suburban areas but also the rural areas that provide natural resources for people, like food, water, energy, and recreation. During the semester, we will explore these questions about the relationship among people, nature, and landscape sustainability: (1) How has the relationship between humans and nature evolved in relation to non-local phenomenon like globalization, urbanization, and industrialization? (2) How are ecosystem dynamics in cities and metropolitan regions different from other ecosystems? (3) What is a sustainable landscape, and does it look different and function differently than conventional landscapes? (4) When considering the potential impacts of climate change, is it realistic to restore an urban ecosystem or agroecosystem to a historic reference ecosystem or an analog? (5) How can we increase ecological and place literacy of people through education so that they are more likely to accept and adopt alternative landscape patterns and practices? (6) Can alternative landscapes, like brownfields, greenways, green walls, green roofs, vertical farms, carbon farms, biofuel farms, and community gardens, help to recouple people's contact with nature by reinterpreting human-nature systems? During the semester, we will answer these questions using the lens of holistic landscape ecology and examine why it is a useful framework for organizing theories, concepts, and ideas about human-nature relationships in metropolitan regions. This approach will help you to understand more about the ecology of place, such as how people's actions influence the distribution and abundance of organisms in landscapes as well as the people's actions affect ecological flows across landscapes (e.g., water, air, animals, pollutants, and climate). It will help you understand why the appearance and beauty of a landscape matters in environmental stewardship, and why the ecology of landscape intervention influences broad and fine scale spatial patterns and human experiences. In addition, holistic landscape ecology complements important trends like sustainability science, ecological urbanism, and landscape urbanism, and we investigate and discuss these connections during the course.
- Textbooks:
- https://bookstores.umn.edu/course-lookup/46278/1173
- Instructor Supplied Information Last Updated:
- 7 December 2009
ClassInfo Links - Spring 2017 Landscape Architecture Classes Taught by Laura Musacchio