Teaching

NRE 501 Bio-Based C Mitigation and Biofuels

This is a new graduate course in SNRE that will be offered by Prof. Currie beginning in Winter term 2009.

This course will provide a foundational but in-depth introduction to biologically-based strategies of carbon mitigation in the context of understanding and achieving targets for reduction of global and national net C emissions.  Strategies for altered carbon management and sequestration will be examined in terms of altering the current trajectories of C storage in the soils and vegetation of a site, landscape, or region.  Methods to quantify changes in carbon storage, including carbon accounting, will be developed and understood in the context of historical and present-day rates of change in C storage associated with land management and land use / land cover change.  The discussion of carbon balance will cover multiple spatial scales, from individual ecosystems or sites to landscapes made up of fragmented, heterogeneous patches of land use / land cover, to regions and to the global C budget.  Landscapes and regional issues in Michigan and the Great Lakes will be included but not overly emphasized. One third to one half of the course will focus on bioenergy and biofuels.  The course will provide an overview of the source of organic substrates used for bioenergy and biofuels, including crops specifically grown for this purpose (including corn, switchgrass, rape, jatropha, sugar cane, palm oil, and poplar trees) and the use of wastes from agriculture and forestry.  The course will provide an overview of the chemistry of production of various biofuels, the energy required for their production, the energy they yield, and coproducts in their production.  This will allow an analysis of energy balance, net carbon mitigation per unit energy, and economics of bioenergy and biofuel production.  An energy-balance and carbon-mitigation analysis of case studies of biofuel production will be conducted, bringing us back to the context of national and international goals for net C emissions reductions that we began with at the start of the course. 

This will be a 3-credit course that will meet for two one-hour lectures and one discussion session per week. This course is being designed to be applicable accross several of the fields of study within the SNRE MS program.

A more detailed preliminary course description and syllabus plan can be downloaded here as a .pdf file. (Note: The specific topics, assignments, and readings will change as this course becomes more fully developed.)

ENVIRON 401 Modeling Coupled Human-Natural Systems

A capstone course in the Program in the Environment, this 3-credit undergraduate course is taught by Prof. Currie each fall.

Increasingly, environmental problems must be understood as multi-dimensional issues in which parts of the environment have large-scale interconnections.  For example, fertilizer runoff in Pennsylvania farms must be understood in terms of its effects on water quality hundreds of miles away, in the Chesapeake Bay.  At the same time, effective stewardship of natural systems such as rivers, estuaries, and forests can not be accomplished through the study of the natural system alone.  Environmental professionals must understand the importance of socioeconomic drivers and needs such as food production and resource extraction.  Natural ecosystems and human systems such as societies and economies are coupled.  Understanding this coupling will be critical for the development of sustainability. Decision makers will need to be able to analyze tradeoffs and potential synergies among social, economic, and ecological goals.
   
As the human population grows and increases its demand for resources, many interconnected environmental systems are undergoing change. Dynamic system models provide a framework to explore, develop, and communicate understanding of complex causes and effects in interconnected systems.  This framework is being used increasingly to study interconnected human and natural systems to address environmental issues.  In this course, students will learn to use the Stella modeling framework to build, explore, and apply systems models to environmental issues and problems. 

This course uses an innovative, active learning approach in which lecturing is interspersed with hands-on interactive challenges and self-guided explorations using computer models of environmental systems.  The course has a combined lecture-laboratory format that takes place in a computer instructional laboratory in which each student is in front of a computer.  A case study approach is used, designed around real, current questions in coupled human-natural systems in the environment. 

Check back here, at the start of the fall 2008 term, for a link to the CTools page for this course.

NRE 639.114 (Graduate Seminar in Natural Resources and Environment) Resilience Thinking: Reading case studies of sustainability analysis in human-natural systems

One of the central topics in understanding the long-term interaction of humans with the natural environment is the question of under what conditions the use and extraction of resources and services from natural ecosystems would be sustainable.  A related question is whether we possess a coherent intellectual framework that allows us to address that first question, or whether we are making forward progress in the development of one.  Walker and Salt (2006, below) recently tackled these questions, using the principle that real case studies of long-term dynamics in human-natural systems offer an opportunity to assess current frameworks, concepts, and theories of sustainability in real natural systems linked closely to real human societies.  The concepts they address include resilience, brittleness, adaptability, domains of attraction, and thresholds in coupled social-ecological systems.  Their five case studies focus on Australian farmlands, eutrophication in Everglades sawgrass meadows, water warming in Caribbean coral reefs, business and recreational activities in the Northern Highland Lake District of northern Wisconsin, and grazing and haymaking in the Kristianstads Vattenrike marshlands in southern Sweden.   

This seminar will be re-offered in winter 2009. For this 1-credit graduate seminar, we will meet biweekly through the term for seven, 2-hour discussions. (Day and time TBD.) Each student will co-lead one discussion and prepare one brief paper offering a critical analysis of one book chapter or other assigned reading at some point during the term (each student can choose his or her own time and assigned paper). First offered in winter 2008, we focussed squarely on the Walker and Salt (2006) book. Based on that experience and on student feedback, this year we will broaden the range of readings to include chapters from other books and additional journal articles so that the ideas of Walker and Salt can be better studied in the broader context of the field of resilience thinking.    

Walker, Brian and David Salt.  2006.  Resilience Thinking:  Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World.  Washington, DC: Island Press. 192 pp. (ISBN 9781597260930; $25 new at Amazon.com)   

Outreach: Michigan Math and Science Scholars

As part of an outreach program to interest high school students in studying the environment as a scholarly field and career field, Prof. Currie teaches a 2-week course each summer to advanced high school students in the Michigan Math and Science Scholars (MMSS) Program. Prof. Currie's course is titled Crisis, Collapse, Resilience and Renewal. The course focuses on using Stella dynamic systems modeling to gain insight into the dynamics of coupled human-natural systems in the environment. A brief course description, together with photos, more information about the program, and application materials can be found on the MMSS web page.