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This introductory course is designed to explore fundamental legal and policy issues in environmental law. By focusing on constitutional issues and a limited number of federal statutes--principally the the Administrative Procedure Act, the Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act; CERCLA (the Superfund law),; the National Environmental Policy Act; and the Endangered Species Act--the course exposes students to the principal approaches to environmental law (litigation, command and control regulation, market incentives, and providing information), as well as to the challenges of setting environmental policy goals and choosing policy targets. The course is designed both for students who intend to pursue environmental studies further and for those who simply want to gain a basic understanding of this key area of public policy.

This class provides an overview of the most important legal tools in the United States for the protection of biodiversity. The course begins with a short overview of the history of wildlife law in the United States. It then turns to a detailed examination of the most important statute for protecting biodiversity in the United States, the Endangered Species Act. The course wraps up with an overview of the most important habitat protection statutes (particularly wetlands protection under the Clean Water Act), constitutional limits on biodiversity protection, and a glimpse at emerging issues such as control of invasive species and international environmental law. Though the class focuses on the legal structure for protecting biodiversity, it will also explore important policy questions such as the role of science and politics in decisionmaking, the meaning and value of diversity, and assessments of the success or failure of the ESA.

Application of demographic methods to the management of plant and animal populations. Conservation problems faced by small populations of threatened or exploited species will be emphasized. Implications for life-history theory will also be discussed. Demographic analyses include (1) an understanding of life cycle diagrams, projection matrices, and age- and stage-based approaches; (2) calculation of population growth rate and sensitivity of demographic parameters to perturbation; and (3) advanced tehcniques of stochastic simulation modeling, spatial analyses, and population viability analyses will be learned.

An integrated and multidisciplinary approach to the study of interactions between plants and the environment. Introduces physical parameters in the global and micro-environment that affect plant function; and molecular, cellular, and developmental aspects of plant response to suboptimal/adverse conditions. Underlying biochemistry, physiology, and molecular biology of plant adaptation and acclimation mechanisms. Examines consequences of industrial activity on plant growth and productivity.

An analysis of the structural diversity of multicellular plants, especially the higher forms, with emphasis on the developmental mechanisms responsible for this variation in form and the significance of this diversity in relation to the environments in which plants grow.

Covers contemporary topics in plant biology. Examines how plants grow, reproduce, and respond to the environment (e.g., to light) in ways distinct from animals. Presents basic principles of genetics, cell, and molecular biology. Basics of genetic engineering and biotechnology reveal how they are used to modify plants, and these socially relevant issues are assessed. Includes visit to modern plant biology research laboratory, and aspects of plant disease and diversity.

The goals of the course are to (a) examine how geographically-linked characteristics of species influence their potential for evolution and extinction; and (b) provide an overview of the analytical techniques and applications for studying the interplay between geographic ranges, environment, evolution, and extinction. Accordingly, the course begins by examining what geographic ranges of species are and what controls them. We then will explore how geographic-range characteristics influence and interact with speciation and extinction processes. With that foundation, we will examine how species assemble into communities and how ecological processes govern distributions at the community and landscape levels, touching on such topics as community energetics, scaling issues, and the influences of humans on "natural" ecosystems. The last third of the course will be devoted to an overview of quantitative analytical techniques that commonly are used to study interactions between biogeogeographic ranges, evolutionary processes, extinction, and environmental change.

A survey of the principles and practices of conservation biology. Factors that affect the creation, destruction, and distribution of biological diversity at the level of the gene, species, and ecosystem are examined. Tools and management options derived from ecology and evolutionary biology that can recover or prevent the loss of biological diversity are explored.

This course is a detailed survey of the physiological approaches used in understanding the relationships between plants and their environment from the functional perspective. Lectures explore physiological adaptation; limiting factors; resources acquisition and allocation; photosynthesis, carbon, and energy balance; water use and water relations; nutrient relations; linking physiology; stable isotope applications in ecophysiology; stress physiology; life history and physiology; the evolution of physiological performance; and physiology at the population, community, and ecosystem levels.

The relationship of the main plant groups and the plant communities of California to climate, soils, vegetation, geological and recent history, and conservation.