Research in our lab deals various aspects of plant physiological ecology, including responses to drought, changes in air temperature and nutrient relations for cultivated plants. Recent projects have considered potential effects of climate change on plant performance and survival, biomonitors of atmospheric pollution, and ecophysiology of exotic invasive speces. Given the social complexity of the Mexican rural environment we are increasingly working at the nexus of botany, society, and the environment, with foci on global change and food security.
Teaching
Recent courses (taught in Spanish) have an interdisciplinary perspective and are based on the case method, which favors higher level learning according to the Bloom Taxonomy. Discussion is further enriched by offering the courses concurrently for Graduate and Undergraduate students.
Graduate students are usually enrolled in UNAM’s Posgrado en Ciencias Biológicas, but students from other institutions have participated, including from El Colegio de la Frontera Sur and the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo. Although the courses were originally offered for juniors and seniors from the Environmental Science majors, students of the other undergraduate programs offered at ENES, Morelia are also considered.
Biodiversity in the era of global change is taught in the fall semester and Sustainability and food security is taught in the Winter/Spring semester each year. Both courses are intensive and taught over four weeks in order to allow attendance by students from out of town.
