Descriptif

This teaching unit aims at depicting the main processes and drivers of changes in the forest plant and tree communities, across different time scales: land use change, climate change, perturbations (storm, fire, logging), new pests, changes in the herbivory pressure.
Observations made during 2 days of field tours show the importance of some of these processes to understand the spatial variability of some characteristics of the forest plant and tree communities, whereas lectures and a literature tutorial give a broader insight on the topic, in tropical, mediterranean, temperate and boreal forests. Tutorials on data analysis with R teach specific methods for analysing the distribution of species or communities, and its changes.