Theory and Practical Skills in Ecology

Welcome to BIOL S338 Theory and Practical Skills in Ecology!

This Course Guide tells you briefly what the course is about and how you can work your way through the course material. It also tells you how much time you will probably need to spend in order to successfully complete the course. Finally, it provides you with a general guide as for assignments.

While much of the content of this Course Guide is similar to that of other HKMU courses, some information is specific to BIOL S338 Theory and Practical Skills in Ecology. Please read it carefully.

About the course

BIOL S338 Theory and Practical Skills in Ecology is a ten-credit, higher-level, compulsory course for both the BSc/BSc (Hons) Environmental Studies Programme, and the BSc in Applied Science. BIOL S338 is divided into ten study units, and is intended to take you about 40 weeks to complete.

BIOL S338 is structured so that students of varying backgrounds can study this course without the restrictions of prerequisites. However, in the interests of coherency and inter-course relationships, it's expected that you will be familiar with contents of foundation courses within the environmental studies such as SCI  S122 and SCI  S121, the foundation courses in Biology and Earth Science, and Chemistry and Physics, respectively. You are also expected to be confident using personal computers and the Internet.

You will find that BIOL S338 integrates directly-relevant Hong Kong materials into the course and thus makes use of the varied and diverse ecological habitats which exist in Hong Kong's unique biogeographic position in the tropical Asia region.

BIOL S338 will therefore also include face-to-face, hands-on field experiences in Hong Kong's diverse habitats. Such live activities will help to magnify the realities made available via the course materials.

This Course Guide provides a detailed course plan for BIOL S338 Theory and Practical Skills in Ecology. It begins with a general description of the course, including its aims, learning outcomes and structure. An outline and itemized descriptions of each of the ten units are then given to summarize the content of the course. Finally, the logistics of course delivery, including study and assignment schedules, marks allocation, printed and non-printed materials related to the course, and tutorial support are detailed.

Course aims

BIOL S338 aims to:

• Improve your ecological literacy by introducing the basic facts, principles and concepts of both fundamental and applied ecology via the use of local examples whenever possible.
• Enhance your scientific knowledge by illustrating how ecologists apply ecological knowledge to solve their problems.
• Help you acquire technological knowledge by applying molecular biological techniques to tackle ecological problems.
• Promote your analytical and writing skill through analysis and interpretation of ecological data, and via an independent ecological project and writing a scientific report.

Course learning outcomes

Upon the completion of BIOL S338, you should be able to:

• Explain the basic ecology facts, terms, theories and techniques introduced and developed in this course.
• Synthesize information from various sources (including this course, ecological literature and field studies or experiments), and communicate clearly your reasoning and conclusions in the form of an abstract, report or essay.
• Think critically about, and draw conclusions from, a given set of ecological data or observations not necessarily described in this course.
• Design and carry out an ecological project in which you propose, formulate and test hypotheses via fieldwork, and analyse and write up your results.
• Illustrate ecological principles and the complexity of interrelationships between living organisms using specific examples.
• Relate human society and ecological systems, and evaluate the actual or likely consequences of particular technological or social changes in industrial ecology.

Course organization

The following chart gives you a brief overview of the course structure:

This section sets out all of the materials you will need to study this course.

Print materials

The printed course materials for BIOL S338 Theory and Practical Skills in Ecology comprise this Course Guide and ten study units. The study units are:

Unit 1 Biotic and abiotic interactions
Unit 2 Terrestrial habitats
Unit 3 Aquatic habitats
Unit 4 Population ecology
Unit 5 Communities ecology
Unit 6 Ecosystems
Unit 7 Humans and ecosystems
Unit 8 Industrial ecology
Unit 9 Molecular ecology
Unit 10 Practical skills in ecology

In each study unit, you may be asked to refer to supporting readings including excerpts from journals, newspapers, government reports, reference books, websites or articles downloaded from the Internet.

In addition to the ten study units, you will need the following materials to complete your study of BIOL S338.

Set textbook

Dudgeon, D and Corlett, R (2011) The Ecology and Biodiversity of Hong Kong, Lions Nature Education Foundation, Cosmos Books Ltd.

Supplementary readings

Excerpts from the following sources will be integrated into the BIOL S338 course materials as core readings:

• Scitable by Nature Education: http://www.nature.com/scitable
• Encyclopedia of Earth: http://www.eoearth.org/

Recommended references

The following references are recommended throughout the study of this course and to enhance your knowledge of ecology. Some of these references are available in the HKMU library.

Baker, A J (ed.) (2000) Molecular Methods in Ecology, Blackwell Science.

Beebee, T J C and Rowe, G (2004) An Introduction to Molecular Ecology, Oxford University Press.

Duchin, F and Hertwich, E (2003) Industrial Ecology, International Society for Ecological economics, Online Encyclopedia of Ecological Economics.

Freeland, J R, Kirk, H and Peterson, S D (2011) Molecular Ecology, 2nd edn, Wiley-Blackwell.

Garner, A and Keoleian, G A (1995) Industrial Ecology: An Introduction, Pollution Prevention and Industrial Ecology.

Molles, M C (2010) Ecology: Concepts and Applications, 5th edn, McGraw-Hill.

Morton, B and Morton, J (1983) The Sea Shore Ecology of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press.

S328 Course Team (1996) Ecology, Books 1 to 5, Open University.

Smith, T M and Smith, R L (2012) Elements of Ecology, 7th edn, Benjamin Cummings.

Stiling, P (2002) Ecology: Theories and Applications, 4th edn, Prentice Hall.

Townsend, C R, Begon, M and Haper, J L (2008) Essentials of Ecology, Blackwell Publishing.

Online resources

• Scitable by Nature Education: http://www.nature.com/scitable
• Encyclopedia of Earth: http://www.eoearth.org/
• National Association of Biology Teachers: https://nabt.org/Resource-Links-Ecology-Environment

Equipment needed (IT resources)

You will need access to a computer system suitable for connection to the Internet. The recommended minimum computing requirements are:

• a PC with a Pentium III 800 MHz processor or better;
• 512 MB RAM (ideally 1GB RAM);
• 1GB of free disk space; and
• a DVD-ROM drive

Software:

• Windows XP or better; and
• a Web browser, e.g. Firefox 2 or above, Internet Explorer 6 or above, or a compatible equivalent.

Non-print media

This course is supported by the Online Learning Environment (OLE). In the OLE you can find useful links and videos that are helpful for studying this course. For details about the OLE and how to access it, please refer to the Online Learning Environment User Guide.

The formal assessment for BIOL S338 includes five assignments and a final examination. The informal assessment includes self-assessed activities and self-tests stipulated in each unit.

Assignments

There will be five assignments for this course. The short questions occupy 40% of each assignment, and are distributed evenly throughout the course. The first assignment, Assignment 1, will cover Units 1–2, Assignment 2 will cover Units 3–4, Assignment 3 will cover Units 5–6, Assignment 4 will cover Units 7–8, and Assignment 5 will cover Units 9–10. Long-form questions such as essays, report write-ups, project assignment, and data interpretation from the field data or journal papers will occupy 60% of each assignment. For Assignment 1–4, the best three out of four assignments will be counted, while Assignment 5 is a compulsory project assignment.

Examination

The examination for BIOL S338 will cover material from all study units.

The assessment items are outlined in the following table.

There are two different methods of student support provided to you in this course: direct personal contact in tutorials, surgeries and day schools, and support through electronic means such as the Online Learning Environment (OLE).

Direct personal contact support

Direct personal contact support includes telephone tutoring, tutorials and surgeries.

Telephone tutoring

Each tutor will allocate four to six hours per week for interacting with students by telephone, email or the discussion board.

Tutorials

There are ten tutorial sessions in the course, totalling 20 hours. These tutorials will involve a number of interactive learning activities. If necessary these meetings will cover other supplementary materials. The last tutorial may be used for revision.

Surgeries

As a supplement to the telephone and face-to-face tutoring, the course also provides surgery sessions that will be held every two months, for a total of five surgeries spaced out throughout the course.

An on-duty tutor chairs each surgery and aims to provide a face-to-face consultation environment to help address your study problem areas.

Day schools

To enhance your learning through practical field experience, the course will provide four day schools which will be in the format of fieldwork. You are required to attend three out of the four day schools for both field and lab work.

After attending the day schools, you should be able to:

• Design a sampling programme for the analysis of vegetation in a given area and be able to give reasons for your decision to choose:
  – between random and non-random samplings;
  – whether to set up a transect or a sampling area;
  – whether to use quadrants, line and belt transects;
  – whether to record the numbers of individuals or the frequencies of plant species, or both;
  – whether to record plant coverage or presence/absence of some species; and
  – appropriate statistical tests to apply to your data.
• Make use of representative collections of animals from given habitats, including at least one of the following:
  – streams, ponds and/or canals (invertebrate animals and/or fishes);
  – grassland and/or shrubs or trees (insects and other invertebrates);
  – mangrove; or
  – marine.
• Design a sampling programme to estimate an animal population and be able to give reasons for your decision for choosing:
  – relative estimates;
  – absolute estimates; or
  – biodiversity indices.
• Apply keys to the identification of at least one group of plants or animals, including dichotomous keys.
• Display a soil profile and recognize soil types and the following soil horizons: litter layer (L), topsoil (A), subsoil (B), parent material (C), and possibly distinguish subdivisions of these soils.
• Suggest hypotheses about which environmental factors may be affecting the distribution of plants and animals in a given area; propose methods for measuring some of these factors (e.g. light, temperature, pH, soil structure, O2 concentration); and explain how to test your hypotheses.
• Present data collected in ecological fieldwork so that they are clearly displayed, and then suggest suitable methods of further analysis.
• Carry out a survey in several weeks' field work, and report on the outcome of this survey.
• Recognize the impact of human activities on the environment, and suggest appropriate objectives and methods for conservation of a named site.

Electronic support

Email

You may submit your study problems to your assigned tutor via email. This channel provides flexibility to both tutors and students in overcoming the limitations of telephone tutoring in solving more technical issues.

Discussion board

You can also raise your questions in a more interactive manner through the discussion board in the Online Learning Environment (OLE).

Dr Paul Tam

Dr Paul Tam obtained his BSc Degree from the University of London by external study, and his PhD from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) by part-time study. He has extensive experience in a variety of fields such as botany, food, biotechnology and ecology as he had been working in both the Department of Botany and the School of Biological Sciences at HKU for more than four decades. He has a keen interest in local flora and ecology, and he particularly focuses his research in the field of Hong Kong plant root fungi, mycorrhizas. He has rich experience in teaching ecology in the distance learning mode at Hong Kong Metropolitan University, as he had been involved in BIOL S328 Ecology course for more than ten years.

Dr Klinsmann Cheung

Dr Cheung earned his PhD at The Chinese University of Hong Kong; his research topic was related to hillfire disturbance to faunal recolonization and faunal biodiversity. In addition, for his MPhil he studied the colonization of benthic fauna in Hong Kong Wetland Park, which earned him an Outstanding Young Scientist Award at an IUCN conference in 2005.

Dr Cheung has experience with Hong Kong biodiversity in both marine and terrestrial habitats as he has worked in the marine and coastal laboratory of City University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Wetland Park, World Wide Fund (HK), Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, ecological consultant companies, and other eco-tour companies.

In addition to his ecological knowledge, he is an experienced ecological interpreter through the professional training from Hong Kong Traveller, World Wide Fund (HK), Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Garden, and the Hong Kong Travel & Tourism Training Centre. He provides training for the junior interpreters, as well as being involving in new tour development at the Mai Po Nature Reserve. He is good at conveying ecological knowledge to people, as teaching and leading field studies were part of his duties at CityU, CUHK and HKMU.

Dr Cheung is currently employed by an ecological consultant firm as an Ecologist to conduct EIA studies, ecological studies and monitoring. He has extensive experience in the design of ecological survey methods, data analysis, reporting and impact assessment. He is also an advanced level scuba diver and certified arborist as well as a certified tree risk assessor.

This Course Guide has given you information about the aims, study schedule, course materials, assessment and tutor support for BIOL S338 Theory and Practical Skills in Ecology. BIOL S338 should help you become not only familiar with the basic principles, but also acquire more advanced and technological knowledge in ecology. You can also improve your analytical and writing skills through analysis and interpretation of ecological data, and via an independent ecological project and writing of scientific field reports.

We hope that you enjoy studying this course. Let's get started!