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Inside the Blue Book
A Course for the Amphibious
November
1999
by Bruce Fellman
Ecology
and Evolutionary Biology 370
Aquatic Ecology
Faculty:
David Skelly, Assistant Professor of Forestry and Environmental
Studies
The
syllabus for EEB 370 begins with a warning to armchair ecologists.
"Be prepared to
get into the water," it reads. "It may rain or even snow on the
days of our scheduled field trips. We will still go."
Students,
who are often upper-level undergraduates, definitely get their feet
wet in the course of this intensive lab and lecture examination
of freshwater ecosystems. First, they journey to Branford to explore
the biology, chemistry, and physics of Linsley Pond and later, they
wade into a pair of streams in the Pisgah Brook watershed.
"We start
by looking at how lakes work," says David Skelly, an aquatic ecologist
who has conducted extensive studies on tadpole biology, "and for
our purposes, we couldn't ask for a better place than Linsley."
The late
G. Evelyn Hutchinson, a Sterling Professor of Biology, and his colleagues spent half a century,
beginning in the mid-1930s, examining this body of water. Their
notes, and even their preserved specimens, are still available so
students can compare their own findings with those of the founders
of the academic discipline known as freshwater ecology. "There's
a great historical legacy of data, so we can see how events in the
past might influence current patterns in nature," says Skelly.
The impact
of people is particularly evident when the class undertakes its
assessment of two streams, one heavily developed, the other largely
untouched. "You can see the impact of development in every aspect
of the stream, from the kinds of insects that live there to the
hydrology," says Skelly, adding that the course features a guest
appearance by F. Herbert Bormann, the Oastler Professor Emeritus
of Forest Ecology, and one of the cofounders of the landmark Hubbard
Brook ecosystem study.
"Father
Watershed," as Bormann is often called, will reiterate a major point
in EEB 370: the interaction of politics and ecology. "Most of the
students go on to careers in policy and planning," says Skelly.
"By learning natural science, they can see why it's cheaper to do
things right in the first place than to put on Band-Aids later on." 
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