LFU:online

The students are expected:
-To recognize, in a historical perspective, the influence of agricultural practices in the shaping of mountain landscapes.
-To recognize the main resources and conditions influencing cultivated plant growth.
-To be able to quantify the different variables influencing mountain agricultural systems in the viewpoint of an efficient, sustainable agriculture.
-To be able of organize simple experiments in order to quantify plant and animal impacts on the agroecosystems.
-To be able of conceive scenarios with modifications in land use and climate, for the optimization of the agricultural system services in a changing world.

-The mountain landscapes as affected by historical land use. Formations created and maintained by human activities.                                                                           –Different cultivation approaches in mountain ranges: organic and conventional agriculture.                                                                                                                      -Optimization of the resource use efficiency in cultivated ecosystems. Best management practices.  Assessment of sustainability in agriculture.                                                                                              
-The animal and human-induced impacts on ecosystem functioning. Interactions between ecosystem biotic components: direct and indirect interactions.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       -The trade-off between agricultural production, biodiversity and regulation of biogeochemical cycles.
-The application of the concept of ecosystem in the study of biotic/abiotic interactions. The solar radiation and the atmosphere. The Liebig’s law and the limiting factors. Favourable and unfavourable, direct and indirect biotic interactions.
-The energy budget and its quantification. The available energy, the albedo, the Stefan-Boltzman law.
-The hydrological budget and its quantification, with special reference to evapotranspiration. The Penman-Monteith equation.
-The carbon budget and its quantification. The net ecosystem production and the net ecosystem carbon balance.                                                                              -The measurement and modelling of ecosystem properties and functions: direct measurement, proximal sensing and remote sensing.
-The measurement of matter and energy exchange at leaf and canopy level. Reflectance indices. Fluorescence based estimates of vegetation activity. Biogeochemical modelling. Model-data fusion.

The course will be composed of two-thirds frontal lectures with PowerPoint presentation slides, one-third field excursions, laboratory and computational activities.  

mündlich

Recent scientific literature, online material of the presentations given during the lectures, and didactic material for the exercises will be provided. In addition, required formative readings are:
-Vegetation Ecology of Central Europe, 4th Edition, Heinz H. Ellenberg, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
-Alpine Plant Life, Functional Plant Ecology of High Mountain Ecosystems; Christian Körner, Elsevier, 2003.
-Principles of Environmental Physics, Plants, Animals, and the Atmosphere, 4th Edition. John L. Monteith and Mike H. Unsworth. Academic Press, 2013.