737319 Long-term socio-ecological research

Type
Lecture and seminar
Semester hours
2
Lecturer (assistant)
Gingrich, Simone , Krausmann, Fridolin
Organisation
Offered in
Wintersemester 2024/25
Languages of instruction
Deutsch
Content

Long-term socio-ecological research (LTSER) is based on the assumption that the observation of society-nature interactions over time is necessary to foresee their long-term effects and side effects. In this way, transformations between social-ecological regimes can be traced, and in this way, the social influence on the environment of the present can be classified in terms of its extent and quality, thus making its sustainability problems comprehensible. The inclusion of historical statistics, maps and other documents requires interdisciplinary approaches that build a bridge between the natural sciences and the humanities. The introductory lectures introduce the basic approaches of investigating long term social-ecological trends and environmental history as well as the infrastructures (e.g. ALTER-Net, ILTER, databases like that of the FAO, or for example ZOBODAT and ANNO) that are available for long-term socio-ecological research. The dramatic changes in the use of energy, materials and soils, as well as the role of the population and the available technology in these processes of change become tangible in the synopsis of the presented papers and the introductory lectures and stimulate the development of research questions by the students.
Previous knowledge expected


Objective (expected results of study and acquired competences)

After the successful completion of the course
- students know the basic approaches, scientific infrastructures and topics of social-ecological long-term research, both from a human ecological and an environmental historical perspective
- they have a basic understanding of the application of long time series in sustainability research
- they have the skills to critically review social-ecological long-term research and to apply long-term approaches in the analysis of sustainability problems.
You can find more details like the schedule or information about exams on the course-page in BOKUonline.