Course: Landscape Change, Resilience, and Ecosystem Services (4302-471)

Persons:

• Prof. Dr. Claudia Bieling (verantwortlich)

Type of Course:

lecture with seminar, exercise and excursion

In-Class Hours Per Week:

5

Contents:

This course builds on two interdisciplinary concepts in order understand landscape change and its ecological and societal implications.
Firstly, students will become acquainted with the social-ecological resilience perspective. The resilience framework provides us with a deeper understanding of the patterns of dynamics in coupled human-natural environments, particularly regarding the interplay between ecological, economic and socio-cultural domains as well as between spatial and temporal scales. These conceptual ideas will be explored and illustrated in the course of case studies from all around the world (individual presentations elaborated by students on self-selected topics).
Secondly, students will deal with the ecosystem services framework, in order to grasp the linkages between biodiversity in changing landscapes and human well-being. We will place a particular focus on the subset of cultural ecosystem services (e.g. recreation, cultural heritage, aesthetics), which have an outstanding relevance not only in European cultural landscapes. In small subgroups, students will carry out an empirical assessment of cultural ecosystem services for an area adjacent to Stuttgart (resulting in group presentations as a basis for opening up a broader discussion e.g. on the possibilities of including such findings in landscape planning).

Literature:

A great introductory reading is "Resilience Thinking - Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World" by Brian Walker and David Salt (2006) - highly recommended! More literature will be specified during the course.

Location:

Hohenheim

Module:

• 4302-470 Landscape Change, Resilience, and Ecosystem Services (compulsory)