FOR3016H F
Instructor: Danijela Puric-Mladenovic
Meeting Section: L0101
In-Person

Natural forests and vegetation, due to their extent, structure, composition, and diverse ecological functions, are the backbone of landscape biodiversity and sustainability. Healthy forests and natural vegetation are also natural climate solutions and the most efficient and sustainable way to combat environmental changes while conserving native biodiversity. Forests and vegetation change over time, and these changes can be more abrupt and visible (e.g., loss of ash due to the impact of Emerald Ash Borer, storm damage), or they can be more subtle and take time to be detected (e.g., changes in plant composition, slow decline of native plant species; increase of nonnative plants). The changes sometimes follow known successional trajectories, but they can also take new directions, subsequently resulting in changed plant composition and novel communities. Monitoring and baseline studies capturing vegetation structure, composition, environmental conditions, and disturbances are necessary for detecting and better understanding these changes and their consequences. Continuous monitoring of forests and vegetation is also essential for providing evidence and quantitative information required to inform and support adaptive management, conservation, and restoration, making predictions about future states and impacts, and evaluating land-use planning and other policies.

This field-based course offers hands-on experience and an experiential learning opportunity in vegetation sampling, monitoring, native and nonnative plant identification, forest mensuration and diverse and critical use of vegetation information. They will gain an understanding of southern Ontario vegetation, forest communities and their classification (e.g. ELC, wetland classification). The course will introduce students to the significance of standard, quantitative and georeferenced vegetation sampling, bioinformatics, and data applications. They will gain experience in how to interpret collected data to describe and quantify the health, condition and state of vegetation and forests. Students will gain functional knowledge in a range of practical and theoretical skills (e.g., field sampling, plant identification, forest mensuration, GPS use, navigation) transferable to their specific graduate projects and future employment. During field sampling, students will also have an opportunity to interact with and learn from established botanists, conservationists, and professionals. Through field sampling and individual projects based on collected data, students will gain hands-on experience regarding concepts and field methods in vegetation and forest monitoring. Students will learn how to extract relevant information from the field data and draw conclusions pertaining to the specific questions or objectives of their interest.

Requirements: This is a graduate-level course requiring previous knowledge of plants and an ability to learn to learn new plants and identify them. A degree in biology, forestry, ecology, landscape architecture, or similar fields with plant identification experience is recommended. The course is open to students outside of the Daniels Faculty; however, it is restricted to 20 students.

Course components include background lectures, field exercises and sampling, readings, and individual final projects utilizing collected data. The course will run daily from May 21 to June 30. Field days will run from May 21 to May 31 at different locations north of Toronto (daily travels). We will spend two weeks exploring diverse vegetation types and forests, from upland to swamp forests, wetlands, and disturbed vegetation. The field work will happen north of Toronto, on the Oak Ridges, Moraine, Lake Simcoe watershed, York, and Durham Regions. The post-field lectures will be administered virtually during June (2 hours per week, evenings to accommodate MFC internships).