Â鶹AV

• Macdonald-Stewart Building, Room MS3-039
• Â鶹AV, Macdonald Campus
• 21,111 Lakeshore Road
• Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue QC H9X 3V9
• Canada

• Telephone: 514-398-7890
• Fax: 514-398-7990
• Email: info [at] nrs.mcgill.ca
• Website: www.mcgill.ca/nrs

Human society depends on the natural world for many of its needs. The more traditional view of natural resources as food, fibre, and energy drawn from the natural world has expanded as we have learned more about the relationships between humans and our environment. While we continue to manage ecosystems for food, fibre, and energy, we increasingly recognize the importance of a wide range of ecosystem services including: regulation of local and global cycles or carbon; nutrients and water; biodiversity and its link to resilience; and recreational, aesthetic and spiritual dimensions. Governance of human intervention in ecosystems requires a perspective that encompasses the full range of services.

The Department of Natural Resource Sciences is an interdisciplinary collaboration among professors, staff, and students with a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds including wildlife and fish biology, entomology, soil science, microbiology, meteorology, forest science, agricultural and resource economics, and environmental policy. Our research and teaching revolves around the intersection of three sets of processes: processes that regulate populations and diversity of organisms within ecosystems; processes that regulate the flow of energy and nutrients through ecosystems; and processes that regulate human behaviour toward ecosystem services and the environment. Our research extends from fundamental to applied questions, and from questions of disciplinary to interdisciplinary relevance. Our graduate program aims to give students both disciplinary depth and interdisciplinary breadth. At the undergraduate level, we are particularly active in the Environmental Biology, Life Science, and Agricultural Economics Majors, as well as in several specializations including Wildlife Biology, Microbiology and Molecular Biotechnology, Environmental Economics, Entomology, Applied Ecosystem Sciences, and Agri-business.