Field Methods in Forest Ecology

Catalog description

This course introduces students to all aspects of forest demography and forest community ecology in the field. Particular attention is given to the agents of woody plant mortality, including beetle gallery identification, pathogenic fungi, spatially explicit density-dependent mortality, fire, and the effects of landscape position. Students learn how data are collected to maximize information used to answer scientific questions, including the relationships between accuracy, precision, uncertainty, and cost (in time and money). Students then collect tree demography data within the Yosemite Forest Dynamics Plot. Students learn how to measure fuel loading at landscape scales according to federal standards. In addition to specific measurements in one forest type (white fir/sugar pine), students visit and compare the other principal forest types of the Sierra Nevada and White Mountains (ponderosa pine, red fir, Jeffrey pine, lodgepole pine, whitebark pine, pinyon/juniper, and bristlecone pine).