Announcements

Biology 419.004/519.004 (CRN: 24853/24854)

Description: This course will focus on the ecology of the UNM Sevilleta Field Station in the middle Rio Grande Valley. This course is a residential course based at the Sevilleta. Students will be living on‐site for the week in the residences at the Field Station. During this intensive field course, students will be taking field trips and exploring various sites and habitats in central New Mexico. This field‐based class provides a rich opportunity for context‐based learning.
Students will:

Check out these two recent publications on drivers and indicators of state change and recovery. This is pretty interesting. Although the models and empirical data are mostly from mesic systems, these ideas definitely apply to aridland systems as well.

Ratajczak, Z., P. D’Odorico, J.B. Nippert, S.L. Collins, N.A. Brunsell and S. Ravi. 2017. Changes in spatial variance during a grassland to shrubland state transition. Journal of Ecology 105: 750-760.

Here's a cool summary of our ~10 years of research comparing a tallgrass prairie in North America (Konza) to grasslands in South Africa (Kruger Park and Ukulinga Research Farm). Check it out in BioScience (Smith et al. 2016). The abstract says: