Welcome to the University of Essex Ecology, Biology and Biodiversity & Conservation degree schemes. These courses offer novel, applied and practically-focused conservation skills with ecological theory. The courses reflect the need for conservation of species, habitats and landscapes in the face of the pressures of modern agriculture, industrialization and a changing world climate in the 21st century.
We may well be in the midst of the 6th great species extinction and we are most definitely in a century of enormous and unpredictable change – the need for the next generation of conservation ecologists has never been greater.
Staff Members
Dr. Stuart Bunting
(aquaculture, coastal zone and resource management)
Prof. Ian Colbeck (marine aerosols, environment-society interactions)
Prof. Richard Geider (algal productivity, bio-optics, nutrient cycling, modelling)
Dr. Leanne Hepburn (corals, coralline algae, sponges and reef taxonomy)
Ms. Rachel Hine (nature and health, sustainable agriculture and food systems, green exercise, green care in agriculture, participatory assessment)
Dr. Aulay Mackenzie (insect / plant evolutionary interactions, behavioural ecology, speciation)
Prof. Jules Pretty (conservation and natural resource management, traditional knowledge)
Dr. Sarah Pilgrim (traditional ecological knowledge, indigenous people land connections, natural resource management)
Dr. David Smith (corals, coral reef ecology and management, physiology, pollution)
Dr. Michael Steinke (Algal ecophysiology, infochemistry of copepods and krill, production of dimethyl sulphide (DMS) and sulphur biogeochemistry)
Dr. Dave Suggett (primary productivity, photophysiology, bio-optics, nutrient cycling)
Prof. Graham Underwood (estuarine and coastal ecology, benthic biofilms, phytoplankton, nutrient cycling, eutrophication)
