Environmental Stress and Adaptation (11774.1)

The Earth is experiencing substantive biodiversity loss due to a wide range of anthropogenic stressors. The future of biodiversity depends on how organisms, their populations, communities and ecosystems respond to stress, so it is critical that environmental scientists have a well-developed understanding of the effects of stressors on biodiversity and how organisms can adapt through acclimation and evolution. This unit brings together concepts in stress ecology, ecotoxicology and adaptation in a multidisciplinary context to introduce students to how stressors are changing organisms, populations, communities and ecosystems. There is a focus on major applied issues such as climate change, land-use change, pollution and invasion, with concepts taught through a combination of theory and practical classes contextualised through field-based applications.

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:
1. Understand the major threats to biodiversity and how biodiversity might respond;
2. Analyse the responses of biodiversity to stressor at multiple levels of biological organisation;
3. Evaluate the response of biodiversity across a stress gradient or gradients; and
4. Evaluate how biodiversity responds when subject to multiple stressors.

Graduate attributes

1. UC graduates are professional - communicate effectively
1. UC graduates are professional - employ up-to-date and relevant knowledge and skills
1. UC graduates are professional - take pride in their professional and personal integrity
1. UC graduates are professional - use creativity, critical thinking, analysis and research skills to solve theoretical and real-world problems
2. UC graduates are global citizens - understand issues in their profession from the perspective of other cultures
3. UC graduates are lifelong learners - adapt to complexity, ambiguity and change by being flexible and keen to engage with new ideas

Prerequisites

11771 Meeting Environmental Challenges: Foundations

Corequisites

None.

Incompatible units

None.

Equivalent units

None.

Assumed knowledge

None.