Environmental Studies

The course analyzes the characteristics of a regenerative food system from a theoretical-practical approach. It includes practical work experience in an urban garden accompanied by guided reflections on the contemplation of nature, ecological processes associated with gardening, and identifying issues with cultivation methods in conventional agriculture. Topics include: food systems; food production; distribution and manufacturing; consumption and waste.

Taiwan is an island country rich in biodiversity. It is located between the Eurasian Plate and Philippine Sea Plate, and its geological structure is quite young. The orogeny in Taiwan form many towering mountains, so even though Taiwan is in the tropical and subtropical zone, a temperate climate is still found at high altitudes. Taiwan is also known for a high percentage of endemic species, because in the Ice Age, Taiwan was connected to Eurasia. After the Ice Age, Taiwan was isolated by the ocean, and many lives gradually evolved into endemic species on the island. Now, the proportion of endemic species in Taiwan is about 71% mammals, 17% birds, 22% reptiles, 31% amphibians, 19% freshwater fish, 25% plants, and 60% insects. Although the land area of Taiwan is only 0.027% of the total of the world, the number of species is as high as 3.8%, which is 150 times the global average. Furthermore, the marine species around Taiwan are about 10% of the world, which is 361 times the average. Taiwan is not a country with large territory, but has rich biological resources. This course invites guest speakers in different fields to talk about the geography, wildlife, ecosystem, and culture of Taiwan. The course studies the natural environment of Taiwan through lectures and field trips.

This course examines natural resource problems related to energy use, renewable and non-renewable resources, and agriculture and food; integration of ecological, economic, and institutional dimensions; application to management and policy issues at regional, national and global levels.

Building on the introduction and broad overview of Sustainable Development (SD) provided in SD1000, this course utilizes the UN's Sustainable Development Goals as a framework and is organized around five thematic clusters. These themes are explored from various disciplinary perspectives, explaining how each theme can be understood and what it entails in practice; who the key stakeholders are and the nature of their involvement; and how we can critically analyze the evidence in the context of SD and go beyond conventional paradigms and behavioral patterns. The course also highlights recurring, cross-cutting themes such as values, partnership, and diversity as ambitions of SD.

The course introduces students to major issues in modern glaciology, and to provides them with an understanding of how glaciers behave and why. The first part of the course explores the fundamental elements of glacier systems (accumulation, ablation, meltwater, ice flow processes, etc.), and explains how these interact to produce specific glacier behaviors (advance and retreat cycles, surges, etc). The second part of the course develops an understanding of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets and Mountain Glaciers, and how they impact other parts of the Earth system, including the oceans. The course develops a holistic understanding of glacier science, emphasizing the links between physical processes at a wide range of spatial and temporal scales.

Life history traits, e.g., growth rates, maturation schedules, and offspring size and number, are influenced by environmental and anthropogenic factors and in turn determine individual fitness and influence population growth rates. Because life history traits are heritable, variation in these traits tends to involve both evolutionary (genetic) and ecological (plastic) processes. Exploring life history variation provides an opportunity not only to understand the eco-evolutionary interactions that shape the observed patterns, but also to forecast population dynamics in changing environments. In this course, we design lectures to guide students to understand the concepts and theories of adaptive life history variation. In addition, the course project involves field sampling and laboratory experiments with mosquitofish Gambusia affinis, to gain hands-on experience on life history research. The objectives of this course are to understand the theoretical background of life history variation, and explore empirical variation in growth rates, maturation schedules, and offspring size and number based on the model species, mosquitofish.