Summer School: Modelling Assisted Migration to adapt forests and ecosystem services to climate change

The Summer School is open to MSc, & Ph.D. students, and Post-Docs in forest research and related disciplines.

EVOLTREE will provide financial support to a limited number of candidates.

For further information: Flyer

Background

Forest trees have evolved at species and population levels to adapt to the local environment in which they grow. Such local adaptations lead to genetically differentiated populations, with traits that enable them to adapt to biotic and abiotic stress factors. As climate changes, forest tree populations are likely to respond in three possible ways: adapt, migrate, or become locally extinct. Natural migration and adaptation are very slow processes that cannot keep up with rapidly changing climate, resulting in maladapted populations with reduced capacity to provide multiple ecosystem services. Given the limitations in tree migration and rapid adaptation, it has been increasingly realized that human-facilitated realignment will be required to match the populations to the environment to which they are adapted. Such facilitated movement is commonly referred to as assisted migration, assisted colonization, assisted relocation, or facilitated migration. This summer school aims to provide in-depth insight on Assisted Migration of forests in climate change with a focus on models to guide decision support. Participants will get hands-on experience in developing models to identify and spatially map adapted and maladapted populations of forest tree species in climate change. Candidates will also have a real-time understanding of the design, issues, and challenges of forest provenance trials through a guided excursion to provenance trials and forest nurseries.