Welcome to the Course

Climate change is a major threat to the capacity of forest ecosystems to provide ecological, economic and social services. Most forest tree species are adapted to a range of climatic conditions, which is referred to as their climatic niche. Due to the long lifecycle and slow rate of migration of forest trees, unprecedented rapid climate change is causing a mismatch between the climate that trees are historically adapted to and the climate that trees will experience in the future. Such a mismatch is likely to result in compromised productivity and increased vulnerability of species to disturbance such as insects and pathogens. Climatic and ecological models have been widely used as essential tools to predict the negative impact of climate change and to provide information for developing forest adaptive strategies. This course is designed to systematically introduce the impact of climate change on forest ecosystems, to explain the principles of ecological models, and how to apply these models to develop forest adaptive strategies to mitigate the negative impact of climate change.

This Youtube video shows more reasons to take this course:

How to take the course?

This is a fully online grad level course. Grading is based on 4 assignments, 5 online module tests, 10  online discussions, and a final group project. All of the content for this course can be found online, therefore it is important that you familiarize yourself with the course website on Canvas. Read the course website tour for a brief introduction on how to navigate the course website.

On a weekly basis, you will have different tasks to complete in order to keep up with the course schedule. For every week there is a web lecture that provides the learning content for a given topic. Along with every lecture, there are instructions for an online discussion. There will be a module test at the end of each module. There will also be assignments that will cover the practical side of course content, including climate and ecological data processing. All assignments are due by Friday of the following week.

How to advance in the course?

This course contains five learning modules, each module contains 2-3 topics, each topic corresponds with a week’s worth of course content. The first module (Module 1), is scheduled to begin during the second week of class. The first week of class is dedicated to course orientation.

What's my advice?

It may take some time to establish a strict routine for an online course. However, it is highly recommended that you do not leave tasks until the last minute. There is a lot of content to get through in this course, and some of the assignments can take a substantial amount of time. My advice is to watch the lectures right away and start the assignments while lecture content is still fresh in your mind. This will give you time to consult classmates and instructors if you have questions.