From: "Andrew J. Miller" <miller@umbc.edu>

Newsgroups: umbc.course.geog110h

Subject: Next assignment (#8), Friday, April 11

Date: Mon, 07 Apr 1997 01:42:19 -0400

For this week, we will expand a bit on the direction we took last week. For our meeting on Friday, once again you should come prepared to make a brief oral presentation using whatever material you think is appropriate to illustrate your topic.

The topic should be based on a research study this time, rather than a generalized description of a biome. I have placed a series of links on the bookmarks page that are associated with large-scale international research experiments (subtitle is "Large-scale field experiments"). These are intended to explore some aspect of global

climate-hydrology-biogeochemistry patterns. Within each site there will be a lot of material that isn't much use to you; try to focus on something that provides real research results about a real place and that draws some relationship between an aspect of the biology or hydrology of a natural landscape system and the global climate system. Some of the examples may also involve discussion of the role of soil; since you are talking about soils in lecture this week, you may also want to explore a couple of references from the list of links subtitled "Soils and soil geography" as well.

One of the reasons for this assignment is to illustrate the types of large-scale international research programs that are now investigating the linkages between the different subsystems of the global environment. Try, if possible, to zero in on some phase of a research project and present a specific finding or result that grabs your interest, as well as the broader context.

From: "Andrew J. Miller" <miller@umbc.edu>

Newsgroups: umbc.course.geog110h

Subject: Re: Next assignment (#8), Friday, April 11 - update Date: Wed, 09 Apr 1997 00:15:16 -0400

Update:

I have now added links to the entire list of U.S. Long-Term Ecological Research sites. Each of these represents a different biome, including (among others) Arctic and Antarctic sites, tall grass and short grass prairie, conifer forests of the Pacific northwest, eastern deciduous forest, and tropical rainforest in Puerto Rico. You may want to browse this part of my bookmark page in looking for something to focus on for this assignment.