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General principles of restoration ecology, assessment of restoration success; restoration planning; conservation in productive landscapes.
The Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) defines ecological restoration as: “The process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed”. While traditionally focusing on establishing new plantings into highly disturbed environments such as waste rock stacks at mine sites, ecological restoration usually involves much more than this including the active management of invasive species and various abiotic site manipulations (e.g. reestablishment of stream courses). There is also an increasing interest in how the process of ecological restoration and especially the provision of guarantees over restoration outcomes can be built into legislative processes such as under the Resource Management act in New Zealand.This course is based around a mixture of seminars, projects and field trips. The seminars are designed to provide you with an overview of some of the key issues in restoration ecology, the essay and projects are designed to enable you to focus in more detail on specific restoration issues, while the field trips are designed to give you first hand experience with individual restoration projects. The course depends very much on your input and will be successful unless you make an active effort to complete readings and participate in class discussions as required. The objective of this course is to explore the role of ecological restoration as a tool for reversing the effects of habitat degradation in modified ecosystems, with a particular focus on New Zealand.
Students will gain:A broad understanding of and an enthusiasm for ecological restoration;Familiarity with a range of restoration approaches;An understanding of the factors that limit the success of restoration and the management interventions that could be used to overcome these;An ability to synthesise research information and present it to the class; andExperience in undertaking a group research project.
Subject to approval of the Head of Department.
David Norton
Domestic fee $2,118.00
International Postgraduate fees
* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.
For further information see School of Forestry .