wendystjohn

This guide is designed to help you focus your studies, but is not intended to be comprehensive. The exam may include anything we discussed in class or discussion.

Introduction and Population Growth

  • The history of DDT
    • What is DDT? What were the consequences of its widespread use?
    • How have we responded to these consequences in the U.S.? Worldwide?
    • What is the current status of DDT globally?
  • What is conservation science and why was it developed? What does it mean to say that it is a “crisis discipline?”
  • The history of human population growth
    • What is exponential growth?
    • Know the major events that were covered (development of agriculture, plague, Industrial Revolution, etc)
  • Population demography (birth rates and death rates)
  • Thomas Malthus’ ideas about human population
  • Demographic Transition Theory
  • I-PAT and Kuznets Curve
  • Factors that slow human population growth

Human Impacts and Climate Change

  • What is the evidence for human-caused extinctions?
  • What is meant by the term Anthropocene?
  • What is a commons? Understand the Tragedy of the Commons.
  • Understand the factors that have led to climate change, and how/why we can consider this a Tragedy of the Commons.
  • What are the three types of habitat loss?
  • Problematic assumptions of Hardin’s view on commons management
  • Ostrum’s view on successful commons management

Biodiversity

  • Biodiversity, and the types & levels of biological variation
  • What is a species? Why is it difficult to define? What definition is best for our purposes this semester?
  • What is precautionary conservation?
  • What traits of organisms are associated with a greater risk of extinction?
  • How does mass extinction differ from the background rate? What is the evidence that we are currently in a mass extinction event?
  • What is the Species-Area Curve, and how can it help us estimate populations?
  • Why is there a mismatch between extinction estimates and the actual number of extinct species in the past few hundred years?

Ecosystem Services

  • Will add to this based on what we cover in class on Monday

Discussion papers: Review the main themes of all papers, along with the questions I asked in the pre-reading assignments.