Courses
Phenology and Climate Change
Alisa Hove, Ph.D.
This short course explores the intersection of phenology—the study of seasonal events in nature—and climate change, emphasizing hands-on learning and participatory science. Students will conduct fieldwork to track plant and animal life cycle events, collect and share phenology data with scientific researchers, and analyze climate-driven shifts in phenology. Through field trips to diverse ecological communities in the Blue Ridge Mountains, students will gain firsthand experience examining the impacts of climate change on local ecosystems. Discussions with researchers and land managers will provide insight into real-world climate science and conservation efforts. Additionally, participants will get a glimpse of college life at Warren Wilson College by engaging with faculty, accessing campus resources, and participating in field-based learning opportunities.
Countering Collapse:
Lessons from Archaeological Studies of Climate Resilience
Scotti M. Norman, Ph.D.
Over the last 50,000 years, humans have colonized and inhabited every continent except Antarctica, and have survived through immense environmental change (ice ages, droughts, El Niños, etc.). How have humans both shaped and been shaped by environmental change over long periods of time? What can contemporary societies learn from the resilience of past humans? This course will demonstrate how archaeological examples of climate adaptations in nearly every environment can contribute to a better understanding of human-environment relationships. The climate-related problems for which we search for answers can often be approached by understanding how past societies adapted to similar events in the past. Students will learn how we study climate change in archaeological contexts and the varied responses of past human societies to these changes (for example hunter-gatherers during Pleistocene megafauna extinction, Mesopotamia, the Maya, Rapa Nui, and others). The course will include fieldwork at Boyd Cabin, a 19th- and 20th- century Freedman’s homestead that was affected by both the Flood of 1916 and Hurricane Helene. Students will explore the physical manifestations of these floods through a day of excavation.