Crash Course Ecology
Season 1
Hank Green teaches about ecology, from human and population growth to community ecology.
Where to Watch Crash Course Ecology • Season 1
12 Episodes
- The History of Life on Earth
E1The History of Life on EarthWith a solid understanding of biology on the small scale under our belts, it's time for the long view - for the next twelve weeks, we'll be learning how the living things that we've studied interact with and influence each other and their environments. Life is powerful, and in order to understand how living systems work, you first have to understand how they originated, developed and diversified over the past 4.5 billion years of Earth's history. Hang on to your hats as Hank tells us the epic drama that is the history of life on Earth. - Population Ecology: The Texas Mosquito Mystery
E2Population Ecology: The Texas Mosquito MysteryPopulation ecology is the study of groups within a species that interact mostly with each other, and it examines how they live together in one geographic area to understand why these populations are different in one time and place than they are in another. How is that in any way useful to anyone ever? Hank uses the example a of West Nile virus outbreak in Texas to show you in this episode of Crash Course: Ecology. - Human Population Growth
E3Human Population GrowthIf being alive on Earth were a contest, humans would win it hands down. We're like the Michael Phelps of being alive, but with 250,000 times more gold medals. Today Hank is here to tell us the specifics of why and how human population growth has happened over the past hundred and fifty years or so, and how those specifics relate to ecology. - Community Ecology: Feel the Love
E4Community Ecology: Feel the LoveInteractions between species are what define ecological communities, and community ecology studies these interactions anywhere they take place. Although interspecies interactions are mostly competitive, competition is pretty dangerous, so a lot of interactions are actually about side-stepping direct competition and instead finding ways to divvy up resources to let species get along. Feel the love? - Ecosystem Ecology: Links in the Chain
E7Ecosystem Ecology: Links in the ChainHank brings us to the next level of ecological study with ecosystem ecology, which looks at how energy, nutrients, and materials are getting shuffled around within an ecosystem (a collection of living and non-living things interacting in a specific place), and which basically comes down to who is eating who. - The Hydrologic and Carbon Cycles: Always Recycle!
E8The Hydrologic and Carbon Cycles: Always Recycle!Hank introduces us to biogeochemical cycles by describing his two favorites: carbon and water. The hydrologic cycle describes how water moves on, above, and below the surface of the Earth, driven by energy supplied by the sun and wind. The carbon cycle does the same... for carbon! - Pollution
E11PollutionHank talks about the last major way humans are impacting the environment in this penultimate episode of Crash Course Ecology. Pollution takes many forms - from the simplest piece of litter to the more complex endocrine distruptors - and ultimately, humans are responsible for it all. - Conservation and Restoration Ecology
E12Conservation and Restoration EcologyHank wraps up the Crash Course on ecology by taking a look at the growing fields of conservation biology and restoration ecology, which use all the kung fu moves we've learned about in the past eleven weeks and apply them to protecting ecosystems and to cleaning up the messes that we've already made.
