BIO3100 Advanced methods in field ecology

You will be tasked with designing a robust and rigorous environmental monitoring program, based on fixed budgets and various constraints, to maximize your capacity to detect an environmental impact should one exist. Through a series of workshops, as groups, you will work through the various steps necessary to create a robust program and then modify their program according to bespoke constraints to tailor their individual programs as necessary. This component will require ~24 of the 36 hours of workshops and will involve some asynchronous video lecture content as well as live lecture content.

You will be tasked with evaluating and critiquing environmental impact assessments that mimic real world programs. Through a series of workshops you will presented with various monitoring programs or experimental design and work through the process for evaluating their rigor and power before then providing an independent critique of the hypothetical impact assessment. 12 of the 36 hours of workshops will be focused on this problem specifically and will involve some asynchronous video lecture content as well as live lecture content.

You will work for one week on an intensive field trip based at the Jock Marshall reserve, which is situated on Monash’s Clayton campus. You will rotate through a series of projects or vignettes covering various habitats, sampling techniques and organisms.