Title: Goals & Learning Objectives - chp 54
Course: BIO-182 RTZ > Section: week 10 - Ecology and the Distribution of Life

GOALS and LEARNING OBJECTIVES  (Chapter 54: Ecology and the Distribution of Life)

GOALS:

- Understand the major factors that determine Earth’s climates, including solar radiation, prevailing winds, and ocean currents
- Be familiar with Earth’s major terrestrial biomes and her aquatic environments, including the oceans and freshwater and estuarine environments

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

1. Contrast the field of ecology with environmentalism
2. Compare and contrast weather and climate
3. Diagram the pattern by which solar radiation imparts energy to the planet and its atmosphere
  1. Explain how this generates global air currents
  2. Explain how air currents and wind determine rainfall patterns and ocean currents.
4. Explain how different vegetation may come to dominate in different biomes. Provide examples
5. Summarize the features of the annual temperature and rainfall patterns that have the most important consequences for vegetation and animal like I different biomes.
6. Identify the key factors that contribute to the formation of each major terrestrial biome.
7. Describe the origins of biogeography including seminal observations and development of the theory.
8. Explain how the establishment of details of continental drift, together with phylogenetic observations, led to our modern understanding of species distributions.
9. Explain why marine organisms have restricted ranges despite the lack of overt barriers.
10. Explain why freshwater habitats host a disproportionately large number of species.

KEY TERMS:

Abiotic, biogeographic region, biogeography, biome, biotic, climate, ecology, ecosystem, environmentalism, estuary, intertidal zone, life zones, microclimate, prevailing wind, rain shadow, trade wind, weather.