Teaching | ECCA Lab

undergraduate students

Professor Vargas is involved in teaching activities for both undergraduate students from Environmental Engineering, Marine Biology, and Biomedical Civil Engineering careers at the Universidad de Concepcion. He collaborate in other undergraduate courses, mainly in topics related with ecosystem functioning, and global change impact in marine ecosystems, but he is responsible of two main courses:

Coastal Ecosystem and Global Change.

This course aims to review the evidence of the intensity and persistence of the effects associated with global change on the different types of coastal ecosystems and human settlements associated with these areas, through mainly theoretical approaches and some case studies as practical exercises. This course is offered during first half each year.

Instructors: Dr. Cristian A. Vargas, with collaboration of Dr. L. Antonio Cuevas, Dr. Luisa M. Saavedra, and Dr. Natalia Osma.

Environmental Sciences

The course deals with general aspects of environmental science. It makes a review of its main paradigms and principles, methodological aspects and applications, also highlighting its relevance for society, introducing the student to the operation of nature and how the environment is being used by man as a resource, emphasizing the main environmental pressures associated with the global change our planet is experiencing.

A central concern of this course will be to develop in students a critical understanding of environmental problems and how, both their understanding and their solution pass through a transversal integration of many disciplines.

Instructors: Dr. Cristian A. Vargas, with the collaboration of other academics from the Faculty of Environmental Sciences.

graduate students

Professor Vargas is also engaged in teaching activities for graduate students from the PhD Program in Environmental Sciences (http://doctoradocienciasambientales.udec.cl/), as collaborator in basic courses, such as Ecosystems and Anthropic Forces, and Research Units I; but he offer every second semester a complementary course:

Multiple-stressors in Marine Ecosystems: Physiological and ecological responses

None marine ecosystem is free from being affected by the impacts of human activity. The intensity and extent of these threats has increased to levels unprecedented in human history. Since many of these stressors, such as temperature increases, changes in ocean circulation and mixing of the oceans, acidification, deoxygenation, coastal hypoxia, pollution, occur many times simultaneously either temporally or spatially, organisms marine and ecosystems are increasingly subject to the simultaneous impacts of multiple stressors.

It is estimated that more than 40% of the marine environment is already affected by a combination of these stressors, making it one of the main global environmental problems. The effects that different stressors, and particularly their combination, will have on ocean organisms and ecosystems, and on the important services they provide to humanity, are currently poorly understood. Improving this situation and defining management solutions have been identified as one of the most important and complex challenges in environmental science today. Most of these stressors have combined effects that can be antagonistic or synergistic rather than just additive. However, marine organisms have also developed a series of mechanisms (at the behavioral, organism, cellular and genetic levels) that allow them to adapt uniquely to narrower niches or to tolerate a wide range of environmental conditions.

This course will offer student’s up-to-date knowledge about marine stressors and their interactions through mainly discussion of scientific articles, and group work (i.e. more than expository type classes).

Instructors: Dr. Cristian A. Vargas, with collaboration of Dr. L. Antonio Cuevas, Dr. Natalia Osma, and Dr. Mauricio Urbina (Department of Zoology), and Dr. Ricardo Barra (Faculty of Environmental Sciences).