RNR533

Forest Ecology is a 3-unit course in which the objective is to develop a better understanding of how forests work. Forests provide many benefits to humanity, including wood, water resources, and habitat for wildlife. In addition, they play a key role in the global carbon cycle. A 2018 U. S. National Academies of Sciences report advocates for using afforestation, reforestation, and improved forest management as \"Negative Emissions Technologies\" to draw CO2 out of the atmosphere. At the same time, we see forests dying in response to drought and going up in smoke in massive wildfires. Can we restore the Earth's climate system with forests, and preserve the many benefits to humanity provided by forests? The course begins with a survey of the diversity of forests at the global scale. We'll then consider forests from the ground up (soils and ecohydrology), proceeding to the physiology of individual trees, what controls tree growth, followed by forest demography, including forest stand development, regeneration, and tree mortality, then landscape-scale processes (disturbance ecology), succession, and resilience ecology, ending with forests as ecosystems. Forest models, forest management, forest wildlife, and forest restoration will be considered throughout.