Trees are important elements and drivers of ecosystem processes in forests and landscapes. Tree species diversity and intraspecific genetic diversity are relevant factors for continuous adaptation, required for a sustainable maintenance of forest products and services. Sustainable forest and landscape management under climate change has to take forest genetic resources into consideration.

The course introduces the basic concepts of conservation genetics, such as inbreeding, inbreeding depression, adaptive genetic diversity, hybridization, or fragmentation. The course shows how genetic methods are used in conservation genetics and potentially applied in practical management, and it critically discusses the benefits and limits of conservation genetics.

This five-day winter school aims at teaching advanced Master students, PhD students and postdoctoral researchers on aspects of the genomics of environmental adaptation. It provides both theoretical background and hands-on exercises on major topics of contemporary environmental genomics such as signatures of selection, outlier analysis, genotype-environment associations, or GWAS.