Day: First five Fridays
Time: 2:00-4:00 p.m.
Location: LSB 4307
Enrollment Code: 59204
Description:
How do plants respond to climate change? And how can we detect and measure the effects of climate change by observing local plant species? This seminar will introduce students to the study of “phenology”: the timing of seasonal, biological events (such as flowering in the spring) and their sensitivity to environmental change. This seminar will cover a few of the methods used to detect the effects of climate change on local and regional plant species and communities, and students will be trained to conduct their own research using the plant collections of the Cheadle Center for Biodiversity & Ecology Restoration. Students will also learn about on-line data sets and “citizen science” programs that track the effects of climate change on plants and animals. Students will have the opportunity to participate in the emerging National Phenology Network, contributing their own observation to a nationwide effort to track the effects of climate change on plants throughout the U.S.
Professor Susan Mazer, Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology, her research examines the processes contributing to the evolution of reproductive and life history traits in wild plant species. She works in both the temperate zone and in the tropics. In California, her research focuses on the ecological causes and consequences of mating system and life history evolution in a group of California wildflowers (in the genus Clarkia). Currently, she is teaching the Botanical Diversity section of the Introductory Biology series (EEMB 3C); an upper division course in General Botany (EEMB 127); and a laboratory in General Botany (EEMB 127L). In addition, there are usually 6-10 undergraduates working in her lab per quarter who earn units as EEMB 199 or EEMB 99 students. She also teaches an undergraduate seminar in Plant Reproductive Ecology & Evolution (EEMB 194M).
Email: mazer@lifesci.ucsb.edu
