Ecology courses

Physiologically structured population models (PSPMs) constitute a subset of structured models in which both the life histories of individuals and the emerging population dynamics unfold in continuous time, and individual states may be continuous or discrete. PSPMs have been very successful in describing and explaining the mechanisms that drive dynamics of natural populations and communities. Moreover, PSPMs form a powerful tool for understanding how population and community dynamics emerge from individual life histories, and equally important, how population and community processes feed back to shape the life histories of individuals.

During the course, the participants will learn about the basic concepts of resilience and their application, from an interdisciplinary perspective (micro-biome to socio-ecological systems). Accordingly, we will address how resilience theory can be used to tackle fundamental and societal issues from a socio-economic and bio-physical perspective and will provide a critical reflection on the relevance, use, and applicability of the concept of resilience. The course is organised by the Graduate Schools WIAS and PE&RC.

The aim of this summer school is to introduce IMPRESSIONS methods and tools so as to demonstrate their applications through studying the impacts of climate change and socio-economic changes in Bulgarian mountains and rural communities. Deadline applications is 30 NOVEMBER 2017 instead of 30 September 2017.

This course introduces methods and software for management, analysis and mapping of soil variables within the R environment for statistical computing. The course alternates between lectures and computer practicals and covers a variety of subjects, such as geostatistics, linear regression and machine learning for soil mapping, quantification of uncertainty and soil map validation.

This is a course on international standards for soils classification and assessment. It will provide an introduction to the soils of the world and their diversity, their main forming factors, classification (according to the World Reference Base for Soil Resources 2014), and management. The course will include lectures and hands-on exercises. PE&RC PhD candidates are entitled to the reduced fee.

In this course participants will learn how to model patterns and structures contained in data. The course will be focused on statistical and machine learning approaches, where the relationships between the observed data and the phenomenon under study are learned directly from observations. Through a series of lectures and practical exercises (in Matlab), the participants will learn about different strategies and their pertinence for specific problems in environmental sciences. Most applications considered in the course will be remote sensing-based, but the course will remain general for a broader audience.

The course focusses on the fundamental knowledge and insight one must have about crops to be able to adapt agronomic practices to the changing world. Here the changing world refers to the environment, increased demands on sustainable production and food quality.

More and more, we are confronted with conflicting demands when trying to develop sustainable land-use strategies, resulting in so-called wicked problems. Scientists working on such wicked problems need to be trained to work in trans-, multi- and interdisciplinary teams of experts with various scientific backgrounds, such as ecologists, economists, political, and social scientists. This course aims to teach them the skills they need for working in such diverse teams, by means of a real-life case. The course is focused around Gällivare, a small town in the north of Sweden, where one can find the “last wilderness of Boreal Europe”, part of an UNESCO World Heritage Site with large nature reserves and national parks. At the same time, it has an active mining industry, forestry, reindeer herding and tourism. It is a perfect place for land use and land use change discussions. A travel subsidy is available for PE&RC PhD candidates.