88271 - MONITORING ECOSYSTEM CHANGES AND FUNCTIONING

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

This course mainly focuses on the evaluation and monitoring of ecosystem changes related to human impact and global change. Particular emphasis will be given to: 1) the ecological mechanisms driving the main ecosystem functions, including energy flow and chemical cycling; 2) the founding basics on species population- and community-levels in relation to ecosystem functions; 3) the main modelling techniques used to monitor spatial changes of ecological properties; 4) the use of remote sensing for evaluating ecosystem changes at wide spatial extents. The course includes practical analysis of spatial data making use of free and open source software (R, GRASS GIS). Students will finally be able to create their own project on monitoring of spatial and temporal changes of ecosystems at different spatial scales.

Contenuti

Lab plan:

1. R (intro)

[Introduction to the R Software and the Free and Open Source philosophy: how to deal with R making your first code!]

2. Spatial R

[Introduction to the R Software and the Free and Open Source philosophy: how to deal with R making your first code!]

3. Population Ecology | Point Patterns Analysis

[Spatial statistics: deriving continuous maps from in-situ data, principles of autocorrelation and spatial interpolation]

4. Multivariate analysis in R

[Population and community monitoring]

5. Remote sensing in R

[Remote sensing: performing amazing spatio-temporal monitoring with satellite data at global scales]

[Geographical data and reference systems: how to deal with the spatial reference of geographical data]

6. Multitemporal analysis of ecosystem functions

[Multitemporal analysis: monitoring change in time]

Questions from students:
1. Is there a threshold to quantify the amount of cut trees?
Lab solution: lecture on classification [RStoolbox and ggplot2]

2. Is there a site where we can download data for the project?
Lab solutions:
(i) lecture on Copernicus data,
(ii) lecture on the GEOBON EBVs data portal

7. Species Distribution Modelling

[Species distribution modelling: modelling the main drivers shaping species distributions]

Testi/Bibliografia

Campbell, N., Reece, J.B., Urry, L. (2014). Biology: A Global Approach, Global Edition, Pearson global edition.

Wegmann, M. (2016). Remote Sensing and GIS for Ecologists: Using Open Source Software. Pelagic Publishing.

Metodi didattici

Lectures and practical exercises.

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

R project by the students and oral presentation.

Strumenti a supporto della didattica

Free and Open Source Software. Free geographic and remote sensing data.

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Duccio Rocchini