This course challenges students to think about how natural resource management and human values affect  forest ecosystems around the world.  The course is a series of case studies that highlight the consequences of different ways of thinking about the forest as a global ecosystem and as a source of goods like trees, water, wildlife, food, jobs, and services. The scientific tools and concepts that have guided management of the forest for the last 100 years, and the laws, rules, and informal institutions that have shaped use of the forests, are analyzed.

This course may be used to satisfy the Biological Sciences or Social and Behavioral Sciences breadth requirement in Letters and Science.

Course goals:

To provide an introduction to different ways of looking at and understanding forests, and the implications of these viewpoints for how forests are treated and managed.

To gain an understanding of the origins and consequences of forest management and policy.

To make a case for the value of social and ecological tools of analysis, and that we are never free from our individual and cultural perspective.

To learn about some prominent environmental problems, and the ways they are being approached by researchers, extension outreach professionals, and stakeholders.

TTH 3:30-5 pm 10 Evans Hall

Professor Lynn Huntsinger   313 Hilgard Hall

Email:  huntsinger@berkeley.edu

SEE:  http://schedule.berkeley.edu/srchsprg.html

 

Note on discussion sections and enrolling in the class:  If you are trying to add into the class, you may find that L&S C30U or ESPM C11 lecture has more room in it, and it is the same class.  I

THE PROBLEM OF DESCRIBING TREES

The aspen glitters in the wind.

And that delights us.

The leaf flutters, turning,

Because that motion in the heat of summer

Protects its cells from drying out.  Likewise the leaf

Of the cottonwood.

The gene pool threw up a wobbly stem

And the tree danced.  No.

The tree capitalized.

No.  There are limits to saying,

In language, what the tree did.

It is good sometimes for poetry to disenchant us.

Dance with me, dancer.  Oh, I will.

Aspens doing something in the wind.

ROBERT HAAS, NEW YORKER, JUNE 27, 2005, AT 97.