Geography 442-01: Syllabus CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, LONG BEACH Biogeography Spring 2019 (ticket # 9856) MW 05:30 - 6:45 p.m. in PH1-208

Instructor Information:

Instructor: Dr. C.M. Rodrigue

E-mail Address: rodrigue@csulb.edu

Home Page: https://home.csulb.edu/~rodrigue/

Telephones: (526) 985-4895 or -8432

Office: PH1-233

Mailbox: PH1-210

Office Hours: M 3-4:40 p.m., W 3-3:50 p.m., and by appointment or e-mail (please start message header with 442 so I can find you in the spam)

Course Description:

Prerequisite: GEOG/ESP 330 or consent of instructor (a course in BIOL is recommended).
Theories and methods of mapping plant and animal distributions, spatial interaction of species with environmental limiting factors, and the human role in temporal and spatial variation of ecosystems.
Letter grade only (A-F). (Lec-problems; field experience)

Course Objectives:

Students successfully completing GEOG 442 should be able to:

• Understand and apply the scientific method in biogeography
• Apply evolutionary theory to the distributions of taxa through space and time
• Understand the internal and external factors governing and limiting a species' distribution
• Understand several direct and indirect ways by which human activities alter the distributions of species and the environmental conditions on which they depend
• Familiarity with several measures of biodiversity at various scales
• Recognize the locations and characteristics the major biomes and zoögeographic provinces of the planet
• Relate the locations and characteristics of the major biomes to climates
• Understand how anthropogenic climate change may affect the distibutions of species, habitats, and biomes
• Be familiar with the five great extinctions events in deep time and why humans may be triggering a comparable sixth great extinction
• Use multivariable field and lab methods in biogeography
• Apply statistical methods to biogeographical data
• Make sophisticated use of library and Internet resources related to biogeography
• Demonstrate proficiency in scientific communications skills (i.e., written communication, graphic communication, oral communication, and teamwork skills)

Required Course Materials:

• Text: Cox, C. Barry; Moore, Peter D.; and Ladle, Richard J, 2016. Biogeography: An Ecological and Evolutionary Approach, 9th ed.

Recommended Course Materials:

• Smartphone app: GPS Status & Toolbox from Eclipsim (available for Android at Google Play app store). There is what looks like a comparable app for the iPhone, MilGPS - Tactical GPS Navigation and MGRS Grid Tool for Land Nav (available from the iTunes app store for $9.99). Another possibility is the free GPS & Maps app. Look for an app that lets you set the following:
  • Location format: DD.DDDDDD° (decimal degrees)
  • Metric units
  • WGS84 datum (in GPS Status & Toolbox, make sure Mean Sea Level altitude is UNchecked, which will then default to WGS84. In MilGPS, it only allows WGS84, so you're good to go).
• Open-source software:
  • LibreOffice or OpenOffice or, for Macs, NeoOffice. These are essentially the same FREE open-source office suite. OpenOffice is more polished and stable, but most new development on this office suite has moved over to LibreOffice (long story about why they forked off), which has some really great curve-fitting functions in their version of the Calc spreadsheet. NeoOffice is the same general project but focussed on the very different Mac OS platforms. We'll do a lot of statistical processing in Calc, so you might want a copy of your very own to work on at home. Did I mention it's free, by any chance?
  • PAST (PAlæontological STatistics), a free multivariate statistics program that is extraordinarily capable and works through a familiar spreadsheet-like interface. You can also download a manual that succinctly describes the techniques it can do.
• Text: Whichever textbook you used in GEOG 200 or BIOL 260, which you would never even think of selling ;-). A couple of helpful online resources:
  • Lane, David. M. 2013. HyperStat Online Statistics Textbook.
  • McDonald, John H. 2014. Handbook of Biological Statistics, 3rd ed.

Grading:

I grade on a modified curve, based on a midterm, final, group project, and a series of lab and field exercises, each of which is weighted equally. Graduate students are expected to do extra work in undergraduate courses, so they will additionally write a review on a biogeography-related book, drawing out its similarities and differences with at least one section of the class.

• Midterm, a mix of objective and subjective questions drawn roughly equally from class lectures and readings = 25 weighted points
• Final, a similar mix to the midterm, but not comprehensive = 25 weighted points
• A group project presenting the results of a field or lab investigation or a community service project = 25 weighted points
• A series of lab and field exercises, which collectively = 25 weighted points
• Graduate students' book review essay is worth an additional 15 weighted points

Makeup Policy:

Makeups are possible in the event of a documented unexpected emergency in a student's life or through prior arrangement with the instructor when the student has advance knowledge of a conflict in schedule, including jury duty or other governmental obligation; death, injury, or serious illness/caretaking responsibilities in the family; work-related issues; certain University sanctioned activities; or religious obligations and observances. Makeups under these circumstances will not be penalized with prior notice or documentation. Scheduling a plane flight before the final is not a compelling conflict in schedule and will be penalized. All other makeup requests, especially those requested after the fact or unsupported by documentation, are subject to denial or serious penalty.

Tentative Course Outline:

Introduction

Science, geography, and biogeography

Data collection and analysis

Review of evolutionary theory

Life Classification

The Linnæan hierarchy and cladistics

The species concept and its complications

Structural classifications

Distribution of a Taxon

Environmental limits to its distribution

Ecological limits to its distribution

Types of biogeographic distributions

Biogeographical Regionalization

Communities

Biomes and climates

Zoögeographic provinces

Biodiversity

Definitions and scales

Diversity gradients

Using shifts in biodiversity to infer environmental gradients and environmental change

Change in the Biosphere

Succession

Dynamic equilibria and adjustment to orbital and geological changes

Extinction and speciation

The great extinction events, including present human impacts

Biogeography and Humanity

Domestication and genetic modification

Exotic invasions

Habitat loss

Biogeographic response to global warming

Emergent diseases

Applied Biogeography

Island biogeography and preserve design

Conservation and restoration ecology

GIS applications to biogeographic problems

University Withdrawal Policy:

It is the student's responsibility to withdraw from classes. Instructors have no obligation to withdraw students who do not attend classes and, because of the bureaucratic difficulty involved, generally choose not to do so. This often catches transfer students by surprise, because community colleges require instructors to drop non-attending students and provide easy and routine mechanisms for them to do so on a weekly basis. If you've been "spoiled" by that system, please be aware that it doesn't work that way here.

Withdrawal from a course after the first two weeks of instruction requires the signature of the instructor and department chair, and it is permissable only for serious and compelling reasons. During the final three weeks of instruction, withdrawals are not permitted except in cases, such as accident or serious illness where the circumstances causing withdrawal are clearly beyond the student's control and the assignment of an incomplete is not practical. Ordinarily, withdrawals in this category involve total withdrawal from the University. The College of Liberal Arts adheres to this policy strictly and does NOT sign withdrawal forms in the final three weeks of class for other reasons. Here are the various deadlines:
https://www.csulb.edu/enrollment-services/key-dates-and-deadlines.

Accessibility:

It is the student's responsibility to let me know at the beginning of the semester if s/he has a disability that may require accommodation. I am personally committed to making my classes accessible and providing accommodations that will help everyone compete on an even keel. I need to know about the issue at the beginning of the semester, though, so that we can work out a mutually reasonable and satisfying accommodation. For more information on campus support services for disabled students, please check out http://www.csulb.edu/divisions/students2/dss.

Related to accessibility, this course will be set up on BeachBoard to enable convenient contact. You will need to have a CSULB e-mail account to use BeachBoard, however. Announcements and messages from me to the class may come by e-mail. The CSULB Technology Help Desk is available for students, by the way. The URL for the Help Desk is http://helpdesk.csulb.edu. Their telephone number is (562) 985-4959.

Policy on Cheating and Plagiarism:

Written work that you hand in is assumed to be original unless your source material is documented appropriately. Using the ideas or words of another person, even a peer, or a web site, as if it were your own, is plagiarism. Simply changing the wording around so that it's not a direct quotation is still plagiarism if you don't give credit to the source of the ideas. If you use the exact wording of your source, enclose the statement in quotation marks or (with longer quotations) indent and single space it without quotation marks and then cite the source and page. When in doubt, cite: It keeps you out of trouble and it also makes you look professional.

Cheating and plagiarism are serious academic offenses: They represent intellectual theft. Students should read the section on cheating and plagiarism in the CSULB catalogue, which can be accessed at http://catalog.csulb.edu/content.php?catoid=2&navoid=30

Furthermore, students should be aware that faculty members have a range of academic actions available to them in cases of cheating and plagiarism. At a minimum, I will fail a student cheating or plagiarizing on a particular assignment, but only if I think that there was some misunderstanding about what these offenses are; if I feel that the decision to cheat or plagiarize was intentional, I will fail a student in the course. I also may then refer the student to Judicial Affairs for possible probation, suspension, or dismissal.

When in doubt, please ask me if you worry you might be getting into a grey area. I might be able to help you, and you'll be leaving a favorable impression. Citing your intellectual debts actually gives your work a professional look, so not doing so and then trying to hide your tracks really has no upside -- and it risks getting you into worlds of pain and disrespect. To learn a little more about plagiarism, take a look at this workshop on ethics in science that several faculty in Geography, Geological Sciences, and Chemistry and Biochemistry put together: The second section is about plagiarism. https://cla.csulb.edu/departments/geography/gdep/ethics.html.

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This document is maintained by Dr. Rodrigue
First put online: 08/20/02
Last Updated: 01/20/19