Energy, Climate and Wildlife Connections

Julie Larsen Maher©WCS

Spring Session: April 2 – May 21, 2010
(6 week online course)

Trying to understand and teach climate change? Want to bring real world examples to your students? This course will help you use inquiry to bring this current and urgent topic to your classroom. Focusing on the sun as the primary source of earth’s energy, you will explore how solar energy is distributed around the earth and the effect this energy has on our atmosphere. We will also examine how the distribution of this energy throughout the world drives the earth’s climate. Climate models and experiments will be used to draw distinctions between weather and climate. Data analysis and examination of historical climate patterns will help you gain an understanding of how scientists study and make predictions about the earth’s changing climate. Opportunities to interact with WCS scientists and conservation leaders will reveal how climate changes are affecting wildlife around the world and WCS initiatives to combat the effects of this change. In addition, we will examine how energy flows through living systems. Using animals and habitats as models, we will interpret energy exchange and transformation – including energy requirements, usage, and flow of energy through trophic levels and food webs in various habitats.