Description: This module introduces students to the ecological principles and quantitative approaches relevant to open ecosystems, including seminatural grasslands. Students develop an understanding of the biodiversity, community dynamics, and ecosystem functions characteristic of these environments, and learn to apply ecological forecasting tools to assess and predict their responses to environmental change. Core topics include community assembly, habitat conversion, landscape modification, and the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events on biodiversity and biotic interactions. The module combines field-based data collection, and analytical exercises. Example forecasting applications include modelling community dynamics from field resurvey data and remote sensing data, predicting vegetation change along altitudinal gradients, and analysing community assembly using interaction networks and functional traits.
Learning outcomes:
Describe the ecological characteristics and processes shaping open terrestrial ecosystems.
Apply forecasting and modelling techniques to quantify biodiversity patterns, community dynamics, and ecosystem functioning.
Collect, analyse, and interpret eld and remote sensing data to evaluate environmental drivers of ecological change.
Assess how climate variability, land-use change and anthropogenic stressors affect open ecosystems and their services.
Integrate vegetation and functional trait data to forecast ecological responses to environmental change.
Module group: Themes Module
Credits: 5 ECTS
Lecturers: Prof. Dr. Anke Jentsch