Busitema University

Ecology is studied on the premise that the environment of an organism includes both living and non-living components. Within this scope, ecological impacts on everyday lives will be explored with special emphasis on global changes and related degradation processes and underlying causes. Ecology is presented as a science basic to environmental science that interacts with all areas of human endeavor.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course, students will be:

• Equipped with the concepts and terminologies used in ecology. 
• Able to explain the reasons for various interactions among organisms and with their environments. 
• Able to describe the application of the scientific method to ecological experimentation.
• Equipped with skills of measuring energy content of a living organisms.
• Equipped with practical skills in laboratory and field methods.
• Able to explain the importance of thermal radiation to the global heat budget across all latitudes.
• Equipped with skills to distinguish consumption, assimilation, production and respiration rates in individual organisms.
• Equipped with methods of studying abundance and distribution of organisms.
• Able to explain ways in which the population of organisms is regulated.
• Able to explain the significance of use of different ecological pyramids in describing stable interactions in ecosystems.

Course Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this course, the student should demonstrate capacity to:

• Apply the concepts and terminologies used in ecology to management of natural and human controlled ecosystems. 
• Articulate environmental (natural and anthropogenic) factors that influence interactions among organisms and with their natural environments. 
• Use ecological experimentation in solving problems concerning use and management of human controlled and natural ecosystems.
• Apply skills of measuring energy content of organisms to determining amount available in human environments to sustain communities and livelihoods.. 
• Apply practical skills in laboratory and field methods to making informed decisions.
• Evaluate the role of the global heat budget in sustaining habitat conditions and livelihoods in human controlled and natural ecosystems.
• Apply skills learnt in obtaining differences in consumption, assimilation, production and respiration rates in individual organisms to determining net productivity available to sustain livelihoods in different human controlled ecosystems.
• Use methods of studying abundance and distribution of organisms to explaining reasons for prevalence of different biological resources in different localities and ecosystems. 
• Articulate environmental factors responsible for control and regulation of population of biological resources in different ecosystems.
• Evaluate the role of ecological pyramids and their limitations to describing sustainability of use of natural resources.