12 Jun
18 Jun

SLU Alnarp and locations in Southern Sweden

PhD Course: Nordic vegetation under changing climate

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NordicVegetation2023

The vegetation of Northern Europe features a fascinating postglacial history, shaped by complex and spatially and temporally non-homogeneous environmental controls. Apart from climate variability at multiple scales, humans have become an increasingly important factor in changing the Nordic vegetation over the last centuries.

Along with direct impact of climate upon vegetation cover, variability in
disturbance regimes had a critical role in contributing to this dynamics. Disturbances cause perturbations in the energy and nutrient flows in ecosystems have been the principal drivers of vegetation dynamics, species and biome distribution. The ongoing climate change impacts properties of disturbance regimes. Linking ecosystem dynamics with their disturbance histories, and more generally - past and modern environmental variability, is done through various reconstruction and modelling techniques. This research helps model and ultimately predict ecosystem responses to external triggers.

The course will provide a possibility for the students to immerse into the
topics of ongoing research focused on understanding historical development, current state and future projections for hemi-boreal and boreal environments of the Northern Hemisphere. The course will give a theoretical overview of the modern paleo- and dendrochronological methods to reconstruct dynamics of boreal and temperate vegetation and related data modelling approaches. After the course completion, students will acquire knowledge to understand and critically analyze results obtained by different methods and evaluate applicability of these methods in their own research programs. 

Fore more information on the course read the course syllabus and the course broschure.

Please contact Igor Drobyshev for further information and registration.

Facts

Time: 2023-06-12 - 2023-06-18
City: SLU Alnarp and locations in Southern Sweden
Organiser: Southern Swedish Forest Research Centre & GDRI Cold forests research network
Last signup date: 22 May 2023
Additional info:

A pre-course assignment will include reading of the selected research papers. These papers will be presented during a seminar during the course. 

The course week (12-18 June) will consist of a series of presentations, supervised group discussions, and excursions.

A post-course assignment will be in the form of a short (2-3 pages) synthesis paper on the topic related to one of the course themes.