Summer School on Forest Research and Global Change

Abstract

This summer school highlights various aspects of forest resilience, the provisioning of ecosystem services under changing environmental and socioeconomic boundary conditions, and the interactions between society and ecology. It is aimed primarily for PhD students to bring themselves up to date with the latest research, to share their research and to network with peers from all around the world.

Objective

The goal of the Summer School is to provide an in-depth understanding of the concepts, approaches to maintain ecosystem services under changing environmental and societal boundary conditions. Students will obtain a deeper understanding of the interactions between, ecology, management and socio-economic boundary conditions. They will gain knowledge of novel modelling and monitoring approaches and they will be able to discuss them considering the expectations on future forests from a scientific, forest management, and socio-economic perspective. The participants will reflect on their own work (master, PhD studies) with respect to other disciplines and discuss possible benefits of interdisciplinary approaches in their field. Ultimately, the participants will get to know the interfaces of their own research with other methods and approaches. This will increase the impact and the relevance of their own work.

Content

The Summer School is organized around four major topics that address different aspects of long-term forest observation, monitoring, experimentation, and modelling: 1. The natural scientific basis of forest dynamics and ecosystem functioning; Plant physiology, atmospheric sciences, hydrology, soil science 2. Management and socio-economic or socio-ecological perspectives; Interactions between management, biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, trade-offs between ecosystem services, stakeholder decisions and socioeconomic boundary conditions 3. Cross-scaling: scaling over space and time; Modelling, remote sensing and long-term observational networks 4. Interdisciplinary methods and approaches addressed with project examples The programme comprises input lectures and discussions with various experts, assigned group work and two excursions. As an enrichment of the scientific scope of the Summer School and to foster interdisciplinarity, a workshop on stakeholder dialogue will be held.

Resources