SCC0935 - STRESS ECOLOGY

courses

ID:

SCC0935

Duration (hours):

64

CFU:

SSD:

ECOLOGIA

Year:

2025

Date/time interval

Secondo Semestre (23/02/2026 - 29/05/2026)

Course Objectives

The course aims to provide the student with tools to understand the importance of the role of environmental stresses in determining the exposure and effects of chemicals on ecosystems, especially taking into account their variability in a context of climate change. The teaching is part of the Master's Degree and Environmental Climate Change and Chemical Risk curricula and is an ideal complement to the Environmental Risk Assessment and Environmental Fate Modeling of the Contaminants present in the Master's degree. It can be also characterized as in-depth study of the subjects dealt with in the Ecotoxicology course.

Expected Learning Outcomes
At the end of the course, the student will be able to:
1. know the main stress agents that influence exposure and effects of contaminants on ecosystems;
2. illustrate the relevance of their changes in determining response in ecosystems
3. implement mitigation actions to reduce exposures and effects in certain environmental scenarios

Course Prerequisites

Knowledge of general and applied ecology, ecotoxicology, environmental chemistry. Finally, an understanding of the spoken and written English language is necessary since the slides the teacher will use in class will be frequently in English, as well as extracts from publications, scientific articles and manuals.

Teaching Methods

Frontal lessons, computer exercises and lab activities. The discussion of the various topics will be carried out through PowerPoint presentations (with slides in English) projected in the classroom. During the exercises, the skills acquired will be exploited by applying them to the resolution of specific problems, such as the variation of exposure to chemical substances and the effects of this substance on organisms belonging to different trophic chains following the variability of some scenarios, due for example , to global climate change. In the exercises, students will work individually under the guidance of the teacher and an exerciser. A final report is expected, which must be presented at the time of the oral exam.

Assessment Methods

Final oral exam. In addition to the level of depth of the topics covered, the teacher positively considers for the purposes of the final evaluation: the ability to organize knowledge discursively; the capacity for critical reasoning on the study carried out; the quality of the exhibition, competence in the use of specialist vocabulary, effectiveness, linearity, etc.

The course deepens and expands issues dealt with in ecotoxicology, illustrating the relevance of stressors and their variations in influencing exposure to pollutants (change of levels and modalities) and the consequent responses of living beings. During the pratical exercises, environmental fate models will be used to evaluate the influence of the variation of some stressors (temperature, precipitation, etc.) on the environmental fate of some contaminants. An experiment will also be set up to evaluate the effects of the variation of different abiotic stressors on the growth of some organisms.