Watershed Services: A Collaborative International Embedded Field Course
Location
Natural Resources Meeting Room
Event Website
http://uenr.warnercnr.colostate.edu
Start Date
3-23-2012 3:15 PM
End Date
3-23-2012 3:45 PM
Description
This presentation outlines a course that is collaboratively taught with faculty form Auburn University and the University of Georgia titled: Watershed Services: The ecology, business, politics, and social impacts of managing inland water systems. It is a two credit course offered every other year for graduate students and seniors with lectures in the U.S. and an embedded field experience over fall break. This class provides students an opportunity to thoroughly examine the environmental services that watersheds provide from academic and on-the-ground perspectives. The payments for environmental services program (PES) in Costa Rica is used as a case study. The stateside portion of the course is organized around a series of lectures/discussions of various sub- topics (e.g. valuation, ecosystem function, policy). Students select a sub-topic as their specific area for in-depth exploration for their course paper due prior to the trip. Students develop a series of questions regarding their sub-topic from the literature to be asked during the field portion of the class. The University of Georgia has a field campus at the top of San Luis Valley in the mountains of Costa Rica. The class study site begins on the campus in the cloud forest and follows the watershed down through a mixture of forest, cattle, sugarcane, pineapple and into a mangrove. With faculty from both universities, students travel to Costa Rica for nine days over fall break. While in country students meet, hear lectures and have discussions with multiple parties involved in the PES program including; local landowners, community water associations, private conservation organizations, private industry (hydroelectric, beverage company) who pay for services, local experts, non-governmental organizations, and central program administrators among others. Students are exposed to the trials and tribulations of actually implementing a program such as this in the field and have the opportunity to ask their questions to a variety of on the ground participants. The presentation outlines the course and discusses current issues such as administrative reactions to ‘sharing’ a course with another university to future directions for developing a full semester seminar series with a separate embedded class.
Watershed Services: A Collaborative International Embedded Field Course
Natural Resources Meeting Room
This presentation outlines a course that is collaboratively taught with faculty form Auburn University and the University of Georgia titled: Watershed Services: The ecology, business, politics, and social impacts of managing inland water systems. It is a two credit course offered every other year for graduate students and seniors with lectures in the U.S. and an embedded field experience over fall break. This class provides students an opportunity to thoroughly examine the environmental services that watersheds provide from academic and on-the-ground perspectives. The payments for environmental services program (PES) in Costa Rica is used as a case study. The stateside portion of the course is organized around a series of lectures/discussions of various sub- topics (e.g. valuation, ecosystem function, policy). Students select a sub-topic as their specific area for in-depth exploration for their course paper due prior to the trip. Students develop a series of questions regarding their sub-topic from the literature to be asked during the field portion of the class. The University of Georgia has a field campus at the top of San Luis Valley in the mountains of Costa Rica. The class study site begins on the campus in the cloud forest and follows the watershed down through a mixture of forest, cattle, sugarcane, pineapple and into a mangrove. With faculty from both universities, students travel to Costa Rica for nine days over fall break. While in country students meet, hear lectures and have discussions with multiple parties involved in the PES program including; local landowners, community water associations, private conservation organizations, private industry (hydroelectric, beverage company) who pay for services, local experts, non-governmental organizations, and central program administrators among others. Students are exposed to the trials and tribulations of actually implementing a program such as this in the field and have the opportunity to ask their questions to a variety of on the ground participants. The presentation outlines the course and discusses current issues such as administrative reactions to ‘sharing’ a course with another university to future directions for developing a full semester seminar series with a separate embedded class.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cuenr/9thBiennial/Sessions/25
Comments
Citation: Morse, WC, Newcomer, Q. 2012. Watershed Services: A Collaborative International Embedded Field Course. UENR 9th Biennial Conference. http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cuenr/9thBiennial/Sessions/25/