Syllabus

FOREST ECOLOGY

What is important today is to change our understanding of the world, to focus on ecosystems rather than on the individual species and organisms that are part of them.  (Rowe 1989)

     Forest/Terrestrial Ecology is a field course emphasizing landscape ecosystems.  Our challenge is to understand whole ecosystems.   We study ecosystems and species, and their relationship to one another in the field, successional trends, and selected aspects of ecosystem functioning.  We study organisms (primarily woody plant species) as one component of landscape ecosystems, and especially:

(1)   characteristics of typical sites and ecosystems that support them;

(2)   regeneration ecology: strategies of reproduction, dispersal, germination,
       establishment, and growth;

(3)   competitive and mutualistic relationships;

(4)   successional trends related to site conditions; and

(5)   genetic and non-genetic variation of species populations and the genetic adaptations
       of species to site conditions.

     Principles of ecology are the basis for preserving, conserving, and managing landscape ecosystems.  The discipline of applied forest ecology that focuses on the forest tree component of ecosystems is termed silviculture.   Silviculture is the theory and practice of controlling forest ecosystem composition, structure, and function.

Purpose and Objectives:

     The overall purpose of the course is, through an understanding of ecological principles, whole ecosystems, and forest species, to enable one to perform well as field ecologists and natural resource professionals.  Our specific objectives are:

(1)   to study ecological principles and critically examine them in a variety of field situations using the landscape ecosystem approach;

(2)   to think holistically using an ecocentric approach.  The landscape ecosystem is our first order object-of-interest or focus, rather than species or single factors such as climate, vegetation, or soil;

(3)   to learn how to distinguish and analyze forest ecosystems in a systematic way -- integrating physiography, soil, and vegetation.  As a result we can understand and predict species-site relationships and management consequences;

(4)   to understand site-species relationships and regeneration ecology of forest species and the genetic and physiological bases of these relationships;

(5)   to examine in the field the effects of natural and human disturbances on the abiotic environment and community composition; and

(6)   to learn field skills in sampling forest ecosystems and analyzing the data collected.