Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

My ESA 2012 Poster is on Faculty of 1000 posters

Posted 19 Sep 2012 / 0

F1000 Posters “The Evolution of Sustainable Use: a flash-based classroom tool for teaching population biology and sustainable resource management“

A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Carrying Capacity, Cooperation, Ecological Modeling, Marine Ecosystems, Multilevel Selection, My publications, Population Growth, Public Policy, Sustainability, Sustainable Harvesting, System Stability, Teaching, Teaching Tools, The Sustainable Use of Fisheries

National Geographic on the yartsa gunbu bubble

Posted 23 Aug 2012 / 0

National Geographic “Tibetan Gold” This story encapsulates a whole host of unsustainable human behaviors: First, we have people over-harvesting an ecological product in a manner that risks its collapse; Second, the over-harvesting is driven by a cultural superstition that has spread without any real basis in fact; and Third, the entire over-valuation of these parasite-infested-worms is Read More

A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Belief, Biodiversity Loss, Coevolution, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Evolution, Ecology, Economic sustainability, Ecosystem Services, Memetic Fitness, Parasitism, Population Growth, Resource Consumption, Sustainable Harvesting, System Stability, Tundra

Preview of my ESA 2012 poster promoting the Evolution of Sustainable Use activity

Posted 31 Jul 2012 / 0

This year I am proud to be returning to the Ecological Society of America annual meeting in Portland, Oregon. I missed last year’s meeting and I am excited to be overwhelmed by all the amazing scholarship that is on display at these meetings. I generally present talks at meetings, but this year I decided to do Read More

A Major Post, Biodiversity Loss, Carrying Capacity, Conferences, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Ecological Modeling, Ecological Society of America, Ecology, Ecology Education, Economic sustainability, Economics, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Food, Group Selection, Marine Ecosystems, Population Growth, Population Pressure, Predation, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, System Stability, Teaching Tools, The Sustainable Use of Fisheries

Are the population dynamics of Dupont’s lark dictated by multilevel selective pressures?

Posted 25 Jun 2012 / 0

A fascinating new paper published this week in the journal PLoS One demonstrates how selection acting at least three different levels produces distinct selective pressures that shape the song behavior of male Dupont’s lark (Chersophilus duponti) in the Ebro Valley of northwestern Spain. Authored by Paola Laiolo and José Ramón Obeso and entitled “Multilevel Selection Read More

A Major Post, Articles, Behavior, Competition, Group Selection, Multilevel Selection, Population Growth

Bird study suggests that multilevel selection theory is necessary to understand population dynamics

Posted 25 Jun 2012 / 0

PLoS One “Multilevel Selection and Neighbourhood Effects from Individual to Metapopulation in a Wild Passerine” I am about to dive into a close reading of this paper, but it suggests that perhaps the reason we do not record multilevel selection pressures is in part because we do not go looking for them.

A Minor Post, Birds, Multilevel Selection, Population Growth

2012 Sustainability Crash Course at Pratt Institute

Posted 25 Mar 2012 / 1

For the second year in a row I participated in Pratt Institute’s Crash Course in sustainability, sponsored by the Center for Sustainable Design Studies. I once again gave my talk entitled “Ecosystems: Where they came from, how they work, and why they stick around“. Beyond speaking, I also got to attend a variety of interesting Read More

Art & Design, Biomes, Center for Sustainable Design Studies, Conferences, Conservation Biology, Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Green Design, Greenwashing, Life Cycle Analysis, Population Growth, Pratt Institute, Public Policy, Quantitative Analysis, Sustainability, Sustainable Pratt

Joel E. Cohen on the 7 billion human mark

Posted 04 Nov 2011 / 0

WNYC The Brian Lehrer Show “7 Billion and Counting“

A Minor Post, Carrying Capacity, Population Growth, Population Pressure

HOME, a documentary about the impacted Biosphere

Posted 18 Sep 2011 / 0

I just watched the video Home, a production of Yann Arthus-Bertrand and his Good Planet Foundation. Composed solely of high-quality panoramic images intensified by a soaring new-age soundtrack, the film provides viewers with a fairly comprehensive overview of the earth’s ecosystems and the challenges to the future health of these ecosystems posed by human industry. Read More

Anthropogenic Change, Biodiversity Loss, Biomes, Bogs & Wetlands, Carrying Capacity, Climate Change, Ecology, Ecology Education, Economics, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Extinction, Film, Television, & Video, Food, Freshwater Ecosystems, Hunger, Mangrove Forests, Marine Ecosystems, Pollution, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Sustainability, System Stability, Taiga (Boreal Forest), Temperate Forest, Terrestrial, Tropical Forest, Tundra, Vegetarianism, Water Supply

Patterns in mussel beds may reflect interaction between individual behavior and emergent environmental patterns

Posted 09 Sep 2011 / 0

Mussel beds off of Polzeath, United Kingdom (photo by Andy F) Natural selection is often oversimplified as the effect of the outside environment on the survival and reproduction probability of individual organisms. In the end this perspective has some value: individual organisms either survive and reproduce or they do not. But along the way, an Read More

Behavioral Ecology, Competition, Cooperation, Emergence, Individual-based Models, Intertidal Zones, Population Growth, Spatially Explicit Modeling

Online tools for teaching the basics of population growth

Posted 08 Sep 2011 / 5

WARNING: Unfortunately, the applets that I discuss below (“Otherwise”) no longer meet Java security specifications. As a result, they won’t work on computers with the most updated version of Java. Please see the other tools listed in the Comments section below as alternatives. I am still searching for the perfect user-friendly package to teach about Read More

Carrying Capacity, Ecological Modeling, Educational Software and Apps, Lesson Ideas, MSCI-270, Ecology, Population Growth, Teaching Tools