Description: Approaches used to identify, evaluate, and manage ecological risks. Focus on interactions among environmental, economic, and social considerations, often utilizing a watershed perspective. Problem formulation, methods selection. Case studies. Project-oriented. Course Abstract: Ecological risk assessment refers to a variety of tools used by resource managers, scientists, and interested stakeholders to evaluate how changes in the environment might affect the health of a target entity. These entities can be cells, organs, individuals, populations, communities, ecosystems, regions, or the earth itself. The risks can arise from chemical, biological, or physical sources and can be transmitted by any medium; e.g., air, water, soil, food, cosmetics, etc. As a consequence, ecological risk assessment is an inherently wide-ranging topic. This can seem daunting at first. However, at its heart, ecological risk assessment is a general framework for environmental problem soliving.

These are skills that you have been developing throughout your career as an Environmental Sciences major. This is a ‘capstone course’ in your experience in the Environmental Sciences major and an opportunity to apply the skills and understanding that you have gained in your previous studies to pressing, real-world issues. It is a particularly exciting time to focus on ecological risk assessment because many of the important problems we face – including stormwater, invasive species, toxic chemicals, phosphorus loading, atmospheric deposition, waste disposal, climate change, and even homeland security – require quantitative and objective analysis that can be provided through a rigorous ecological risk assessment approach.

This course includes lectures, discussions, projects and presentations. While there are some fundamental principles that we will discuss early in the course, much of the course direction and content will be developed by you, according to your interests. You will be expected to help define focus topics, critically evaluate primary literature, engage in informed discussion, seek outside experts, and work together in small groups on a project of personal interest.

More information about the course is available via the links to the left.