Calendar Description
Students will learn the principles behind forest land data acquisition and use and will practice some of the procedures. Practical examples and exercises will be used throughout the course to provide a deeper understanding of the complexities and uses of this information.
Introduction
Information on forests and other lands is essential to making decisions among competing land uses, and managing these lands for sustainability. In this course, an overview of the procedures and practice for gathering, storing, analyzing, displaying, and reporting information will be presented. Practical examples and exercises will be used throughout the course to provide a deeper understanding of the complexities and uses of land information.
Learning Outcomes
1. Students will be able to describe the general procedures and practices for data gathering, storing, analyzing, displaying, and reporting information.
2. For each of these sub-topics, students will be able to give specific examples of good practices, and will be able to demonstrate that they know where to find further details on each topic.
3. Students will be able to discuss the complexities of land information, and how this relates to alternative procedures and practices that could be used.
4. Students will be able to use simpler procedures for data gathering, storing, analyzing, and displaying information to meet the needs given a particular management problem.
5. Given particular land management problems, students will be able to recommend what information is needed.
6. Students will demonstrate the abilities to report on the information to i) general public; and to ii) peers, given a particular land management problem.
Course Objectives
The principle objective of this course is to introduce the concepts of acquiring and using information on land for a variety of management applications. As part of the course, particular land management problems will be provided, and students will discuss what information is needed, how this information might be obtained, what analyses are needed, and how best to display and report on the results. Since methods for acquiring and using information are vast, students will use simpler methods in the course, but more complex methods will be discussed. Also, part of the practice of acquiring and using information is to know when you need further education and training, and knowing when you need to hire experts in for particular aspects. Discussions of how to further their knowledge, and what expertise might be needed will be included in the course.