Field and Laboratory Equipment for an Undergraduate Ecology and Environmental Sciences Program in the Caribbean.

最近购置了一套核心的生态仪器，使本系有可能扩大其高级课程，并扩大它所能提供的面向学生的研究项目的范围。因此，这个开发项目构成了大学正在进行的强调科学的计划的组成部分。这个项目的具体影响是对生态学和环境科学的本科教学。学生可获得的新资源包括海洋实地研究仪器、便携电导率/盐度计、溶解氧和生物需氧量计、岩心取样器和电子土壤测试实验室、记录气象站、空气质量监测装置，以及用于研究从实地带回的环境样本以进行更精确分析的先进实验室仪器。这一改进将使大学的毕业生准备得更好，而他们毕业后又能更好地在专业水平上表现。特别是加勒比地区和整个热带美洲迫切需要训练有素的生态学家，以帮助制止目前森林覆盖、土壤和生物多样性等自然资源的灾难性损失，并帮助应付这种损失的影响。

The recent acquisition of a core set of ecological instrumentation is making it possible for this Department to expand its upper-level courses as well as to widen the range of the student-oriented research projects it can offer. This development project thus forms an integral part of an ongoing University plan to emphasize the sciences. The specific impact of this project is on undergraduate instruction in Ecology and the Environmental Sciences. Among the new resources now available to the students are an oceanographic field kit, portable conductivity/salinity meter, dissolved oxygen and biological oxygen demand meter, core sampler and electronic soil testing lab, recording weather station, air quality monitoring devices, and sophisticated laboratory apparati for studying environmental samples brought in from the field for more exacting analysis. This improvement will result in a better prepared graduate of the University who in turn will be better able to perform at the professional level after graduation. The Caribbean area in particular and tropical America in general are in urgent need of trained ecologists to help stem the current catastrophic losses of such natural resources as forest cover, soils and biological diversity, and to help cope with the effects of such losses.