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Intensive Courses and Master classes
The intensive courses and master classes aim to explore
individual aspects of Landscape Ecology and to compare and contrast different
national perspectives, approaches and issues and in particular, what role
Landscape Ecology can play in developing strategies for a sustainable future.
The 7th IALE World Congress allows early stage scientists and practitioners from
around the world to make contact with more established scholars to reflect upon
current issues in Landscape Ecology in a critical way.
Nine courses of different topic and length are being offered. They are being
organised by several internationally recognised scholars from around the world.
The Venue for all courses with one exception will be the University of
Wageningen. All courses will take place before the World congress (see
individual course descriptions); course material will be provided at the
beginning of the courses. The courses have been adopted by the Research
Schools Wageningen Institute for Environment and Climate Research (WIMEK-SENSE)
and Production Ecology and Resource Conservation (PE&RC). This means that PhD
Students can receive credits for the courses.
The students will receive a certificate and a transcript setting up the topics
covered and hours studied so that attendance can be given a credit rating
according to the EU ECTS-system or other systems when required. The graduation
is planned at Sunday afternoon 8th of July 2007 in the WICC.
To register for the courses and to pay the course fee please fill in the form below and
send to: contributions@iale2007.com.
Registration form
Course Registration: deadline 31 May
Due to a low subscription of courses 4 and 9 these courses will have to be
cancelled. Participants have been informed
There is funding available for students interested to
participate on the courses and master classes. Eligible candidates are
researchers and PhD candidates under
the ESF EuroDIVERSITY Programme.
 
The ESF Support covers travel costs,
subsistence, accommodation and the course and congress fee. You are required to fill in the
EuroDIVERSITY
application form and send it to
eurodiversity@esf.org before Tuesday 1 May 2007. The awarded
researchers may submit their
Travel Claim Form
by 15 August in order to have their costs reimbursed. For further
information please see the
Guideliness.
For more information about the EuroDiversity Programme and
the participating research groups, read the
leaflet (pdf, 1 MB).
The Courses:
1. FRAGSTATS, analysis of landscape patterns
Landscape structure analysis is critical for natural resource
management and endangered species conservation because many threats to native
biodiversity involve habitat loss and degradation. Understanding the nature of
landscape-level changes in amounts and configurations of different land cover
classes and linking those changes to ecological processes can help to identify
where management intervention will be most useful. Additionally, such analyses
can help to identify landscape-level patterns necessary for persistence of
threatened and endangered species and thus are quite useful in recovery
planning. In this workshop, participants will learn how to use FRAGSTATS to
analyze landscape structure.
The specific objectives of this workshop are to:
1. Introduce participants to landscape structure analysis.
2. Provide participants with hands-on experience with FRAGSTATS.
3. Provide participants with insights into the behavior of landscape metrics.
4. Provide participants with insights into future directions in landscape
structure analysis.
At the end of this course, participants will be able to:
1. Make informed decisions regarding the selection of appropriate landscape
metrics for particular questions of interest.
2. Conduct a landscape structure analysis using FRAGSTATS and appropriately
interpret the results.
3. Apply the results of landscape structure analyses to conservation situations,
including evaluating the ecological consequences of alternative land management
scenarios.
Organiser: Kevin McGarigal; University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, USA
Course type: computer lab
Level of education to be addressed: GIS skills
Maximum number of participants: 25-30
Duration: 1 full day workshop
Course fee: 50, includes all workshop handouts/materials
2. Landscape and sustainability
Cancelled
3. Module on Landscape Ecology: Understanding Processes
from Patterns
Landscape ecology embraces spatial heterogeneity and patterns:
how to characterize pattern, how it develops and changes through time, and its
implications for populations, communities, and ecosystem processes. Because
landscapes are large--typically measured in kilometres--human activities have an
important influence on landscape patterns. Landscape ecology, then, is naturally
concerned with anthropogenic aspects of landscape pattern and change. Within
this framework the course focus on the application of spatial data analysis
techniques and spatially explicit modelling approaches in empirical landscape
ecology research.
This introductory to intermediate level course encompasses three main parts. The
first will introduce you into the quantification of landscape patterns and
habitat modelling, the second will deal with spatially explicit approaches for
modelling landscape dynamics and the third one will review and compare the
characteristics and performance of different available connectivity indices for
landscape planning applications.
Organiser: Sandra Luque, Philippe Delcros and Santiago Saura
Course type: Lectures and literature seminar work and computer lab
Level of education to be addressed: Introduction course with a
focus on the understanding of the development and dynamics of patterns in
ecological phenomena, the role of disturbance and complexity in ecosystems, and
the characteristic spatial and temporal scales of ecological events. Effects of
anthropogenic pressures, natural disturbances and the maintenance of
biodiversity.
Maximum number of participants: 25-30
Duration: 2 days
Course fee: 100
Remark: If there are enough interested candidates from Latin America or French
speaking African countries, we offer to organize the course, deliver the
lectures and facilitate the discussion in either French or Spanish. However all
material (i.e. papers, hand outs, power points) will be in English.
4. Governing for Sustainability on Local Level: Dynamic
institutional capacity and sustainable policy achievement - case studies of good
practice
Cancelled
5. Land change modelling methods: calibration, validation,
and extrapolation
This workshop provides hands-on training in GIS-based land
change modeling. Participants learn the concepts and perform the analyses
necessary to calibrate and to validate a land change model. The workshop uses
the model Geomod, which reads raster maps of land-use and other biological,
geological, sociological, demographic, or economic attributes to determine
empirically the attributes of land that humans tend to use. Geomod forecasts
locations for land-use change according to any of three decision rules based on:
(1) nearest neighbours, (2) stratification by sub-region, and/or (3) a
suitability map. Participants then use tools for validation in order to quantify
the models ability to forecast land change accurately based on a variety of
statistical measurements, including error due to quantity and error due to
location at multiple resolutions. The workshop focuses on both the concepts and
the operation of the relevant modules of the GIS software Idrisi. Prior
experience with GIS is helpful, while prior experience with Idrisi is not
necessary. Participants who complete the course are entitled to a 50 percent
discount on purchase of an Idrisi license, which is a $625 savings.
Organiser: Robert Gilmore Pontius Jr, Clark University, School
of Geography, Worcester USA
Course type: Computer lab and lectures
Level of education to be addressed: Experience with GIS is needed. Familiarity
with land change models is preferred. This is an introductory/intermediate
Maximum number of participants: 20-30
Duration: 1 day
Course fee: 100
6. Cancelled
7. Landscape Ecology for Impact Assessment (Environmental
Impact Assessment, EIA and Strategic Environmental Assessment, SEA).
Since habitat loss and fragmentation are major threats to
biodiversity worldwide, these issues should be addressed routinely in EIA and
SEA. This course will explore how impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation on
biodiversity can be considered in impact assessment, including stages of
screening, scoping, impact prediction and evaluation, mitigation recommendations
and monitoring. In particular we will look at the use of landscape ecology to
support an ecosystem approach as advocated by the Convention on Biological
Diversity.
Examples will be given of the use of GIS and multicriteria analysis as tools,
for example:
-
EIA: multicriteria analysis to compare alternative road alignments in terms
of impacts on ecosystems.
-
SEA: landscape ecological indicators to assess impacts of a spatial plan.
-
Spatial planning: land suitability analysis to locate development.
Organiser: J R Treweek, UK UK; Ulla Mortberg, KTH, Royal
Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, Davide Geneletti, University of
Trentino, Italy;
Course type: Lectures and workshop and field visit.
Level of education to be addressed: Graduate, Masters
Maximum number of participants: 30
Duration: 2 days
Course fee: 150
8. Cancelled
9. Short Intensive Course on Wetland Water Management
Cancelled
10.
Quantifying genetic variation
and structure: An introductory workshop for the first step in landscape genetics
Organisers: Lisette P. Waits, Niko Balkenhol; University of
Idaho, USA
Course type: Lecture and literature discussion
The goal of our workshop is to enable students and
professionals from various disciplines to think about meaningful ways for
linking data on gene flow and genetic structure with landscape attributes, and
to critically evaluate published landscape genetic studies.
The workshop will be structured into two parts. First, theoretical background on
important population genetic principles will be covered. Second, the most widely
applied methods for measuring gene flow and detecting genetic population
structure will be explained.. We will present the purpose of each method, its
underlying assumptions, and its advantages and limitations. We will demonstrate
how the methods can be used in practical applications, and show typical results
obtained from such analyses.
The workshop will include the following topics:
What is landscape genetics?
What can landscape genetics be used for?
The 2 steps of landscape genetics (and why theres actually more to it)
What is genetic variation?
Neutral vs. selective genetic variation
Why is genetic variation important?
Factors influencing genetic variation (Selection, mutation, drift, migration)
Models of gene flow & population structure
Fst and related statistics
Analysis of Molecular Variance (AMOVA)
Genetic distance measures and Mantel tests
Genetic Autocorrelation analysis
Assignment methods
Barrier detection methods (Wombling, Monmoniers algorithm)
For more info, please contact Lisette Waits (lwaits@uidaho.edu)
or Niko Balkenhol (nbalkenhol@uidaho.edu).
Level of education to be addressed: Introductory course for non-geneticists.
Focus is on population genetic principles, and the most commonly used methods
for measuring gene flow and detecting genetic population structure. The goal is
to enable students and professionals from various disciplines to think about
meaningful ways for linking genetic data with landscape attributes, and to
critically evaluate published landscape genetic studies.
Number of participants: 10-40
Duration: 1 day
Course fee: 50
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