7.30
Fundamentals of Ecology
See description under subject 1.018[J] .
Fall 2009 · Ecology I: The Earth System
Topics
- Introduction: what is ecology?
- Evolution of Earth and the biosphere
- How to be alive/thermodynamics of life
- Primary productivity I
- Primary productivity II
- Biogeochemical cycles
- Global carbon cycle
- Limiting factors and Redfield
- Ecosystem experiments/geoengineering
- Secondary productivity/food webs
- Population growth
- Chemostats/life tables
- Human population growth
- Competition and the niche
- Predation/symbiosis/mutualism
- Biogeography
- Project presentations
- Project presentations (cont.)
Readings
- Vernadskii, V. I. “The Biosphere.” Biosfera . Leningrad, 1926. Translated by Lawrence R. Pomeroy, University of Georgia.
- Rowe, J. Stan. “Biological Fallacy: Life Equals Organisms.” Bioscience 42, no. 6 (1992): 394.
- Remmert, Hermann. “Ecology: the Basic Concept.” In Ecology . New York, NY: Springer-Verlag Berlin, 1980. ISBN: 9783540100591.
- Des Marais, David J. “When did Photosynthesis Emerge on Earth?” Science 289, no. 5485 (2000): 1703-1705.
- Chyba, Christopher F. “Rethinking Earth’s Early Atmosphere.” Science 308 (2005): 962-963.
- Kump, Lee R. “The Rise of Atmospheric Oxygen.” Nature 451 (2008): 277-278.
- Jannasch, Holger W. “Life at the Sea Floor.” Nature 374 (1995): 676-677.
- Lovley, Derek R. “Bug Juice: Harvesting Electricity with Microorganisms.” Nature Reviews Microbiology 4, no. 7 (2006): 497-508.
- Jetten, Mike, et al. “Microbiology and Application of the Anaerobic Ammonium Oxidation (‘anammox’) Process.” Current Opinion in Biotechnology 12, no. 3 (2001): 283-288.
- Morton, Oliver. “Introduction.” In Eating the Sun . London, UK: Fourth Estate, 2008, pp. xi-xix. ISBN: 9780007163649.
- Chisholm, S. W. “What Limits Phytoplankton Growth.” Oceanus 35, no. 3 (1992): 36-46.
- Falkowski, Paul G. “The Ocean’s Invisible Forest.” Scientific American , August 2002.
- Galloway, James, et al. “Transformation of the Nitrogen Cycle: Recent Trends, Questions, and Potential Solutions.” Science 320, no. 5878 (2008): 889-892.
- Oki, Taikan, and Shinjiro Kanae. “Global Hydrological Cycles and World Water Resources.” Science 313, no. 5790 (2006): 1068-1072.
- Filippelli, Gabriel M. “The Global Phosphorus Cycle: Past, Present, and Future.” Elements 4, no. 2 (2008): 89-95.
- Doney, Scott C., Victoria J. Fabry, Richard A. Feely, and Joan A. Kleypas. “Ocean Acidification: The Other CO2 Problem.” Annual Review of Marine Science 1 (2009): 169-192.
- LEC #: 10 · TOPICS: Limiting factors and Redfield · READINGS: Redfield, Alfred C. “On the Proportions of Organic Derivatives in Seawater and their Relation to the Composition of Plankton.” Chapter 5 in James Johnstone Memorial Volume . Edited by R. J. Daniel. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 1934, pp. 176-192.
- Likens, Gene. “Some Perspectives on Long-term Biogeochemical Research from the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study.” Ecology 85, no. 9 (2004): 2355-2362.
- “A Changing Climate of Opinion?” The Economist , September 4, 2008.
- Lovelock, James. “A Geophysiologist’s Thoughts on Geoengineering.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 366, no. 1882 (2008): 3883-3890.
- Kintisch, Eli. “Scientists Say Continued Warming Warrants Closer Look at Drastic Fixes.” Science 318 (2007): 1054-1055.
- Carpenter, Stephen, et al. “Ecosystem Experiments.” Science 269 (1995): 324-327.
- Beddington, John. “The Primary Requirements.” Nature 374 (1995): 213-214.
- Pauly, Daniel, and V. Christensen. “Primary Production Required to Sustain Global Fisheries.” Nature 374 (1995): 255-257.
- Pauley, Daniel, et al. “Fishing Down Aquatic Food Webs.” American Scientist 88 (2000): 46-51.
- Stapp, Paul, Gary A. Polis, and Francisco Sánchez Piñero. “Stable Isotopes Reveal Strong Marine and El Niño Effects on Island Food Webs.” Nature 401 (1999): 467-469.
- Peterson, Bruce, Robert Howarth, and Robert Garritt. “Sulfur and Carbon Isotopes as Tracers of Salt-Marsh Organic Matter Flow.” Ecology 67, no. 4 (1986): 865-874.
- Dunne, Jennifer, Richard Williams, and Neo Martinez. “Network Structure and Biodiversity Loss in Food Webs: Robustness Increases with Connectance.” Ecology Letters 5 (2002): 558-567.
- Bol, Roland, and Christian Pflieger. “Stable Isotope Analysis of the Hair of Modern Humans and Their Domestic Animals.” Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry 16 (2002): 2195-2200.
- Smil, Vaclav. “How Many Billions to Go?” Nature 401 (1999): 429.
- Palumbi, Stephen. “Humans as the World’s Greatest Evolutionary Force.” Science 293 (2001): 1786-1790.
- Cohen, Joel. “Population Growth and Earth’s Human Carrying Capacity.” Science 269, no. 5222 (1995): 341-346.
- Tilman, David, et al. “Agricultural Sustainability and Intensive Production Practices.” Nature 418 (2002): 671-677.
- Wackernagel, Mathis, et al. “National Natural Capital Accounting with the Ecological Footprint Concept.” Ecological Economics 29 (1999): 375-390.
- Hindell, Mark. “Some Life-History Parameters of a Declining Population of Southern Elephant Seals, Mirounga Leonina.” Journal of Animal Ecology 60, no. 1 (1991): 119-134.
- Lauer, Thomas, and Anne Spacie. “Space as a Limiting Resource in Freshwater Systems: Competition between Zebra Mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) and Freshwater Sponges (Porifera).” Hydrobiologia 517 (2004): 137-145.
- Byers, James. “Competition Between Two Estuarine Snails: Implications For Invasions of Exotic Species.” Ecology 81, no. 5 (2000): 1225-1239.
- Turchin, P., L. Oksanen, P. Ekerholm, T. Oksanen, and H. Henttonen. “Are Lemmings Prey or Predators?” Nature 405 (2000): 562-565.
- Gilg, Olivier, Ilkka Hanski, and Benoit Sittler. “Cyclic Dynamics in a Simple Vertebrate Predator-Prey Community.” Science 302 (2003): 866-868.
- Hudson, Peter J., and Ottar N. Bjørnstad. “Vole Stranglers and Lemming Cycles.” Science 302 (2003): 797-798.
- Myers, Norman, et al. “Biodiversity Hotspots for Conservation Priorities.” Nature 403 (2000): 853-858.
- Worm, Boris, et al. “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services.” Science 314 (2006): 787-790.
- Layard, Richard. “Happiness: Has Social Science a Clue?” Lionel Robbins Memorial Lectures, March 3-5, 2003. London School of Economics.
- Turner, Graham. “A Comparison of ‘The Limits to Growth’ with 30 Years of Reality.” Global Environmental Change 18 (2008): 397-411.
- Smith, Robert, and Thomas Smith. Ecology and Field Biology . 6th ed. San Francisco, CA: Benjamin Cummings, 2001. ISBN: 9780321068811.
Prerequisites & course information
Same subject as 1.018[J] , 12.031[J] Prereq: None U (Fall) 4-0-8 units. REST
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2009
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- MIT OCW readings ↗
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.