11183 Ecology

Description

This subject introduces landscape architecture students to ecological thinking, including methods for viewing, experiencing and understanding nature and natural systems. Students will be exposed to ecology as a scientific enterprise and body of knowledge, as well as other equally valid methods for engaging with nature, such as Aboriginal understandings of Country. Consideration will be given to how these differing cultural perspectives shape our relationship to nature.

Students will be introduced to the various phenomena that threaten ecosystems, such as climate change, human-exacerbated bushfires, invasive species, habitat destruction and fragmentation. Furthermore, they will explore different management/conservation strategies, including those practiced by Aboriginal cultures for millennia and latest perspecitives in the scientific community. In doing so, they will consider how we can become better custodians of the landscape.

The learning will combine on-campus lectures and tutorials with several field trips across the Sydney region. These trips will enable students to experience, observe, document and analyse ecological communities and to thereby understand the complex, interdependent and evolving relationships that occur among organisms (including humans).

Typical availability

Autumn session, City campus