Courses open for registration

In this course, the participant will be provided with both the basic understanding of the principles of multivariate methods and the skills needed to use those methods in his/her own work. The course consists of lectures and computer practicals using RStudio.

This course will provide an overview of concepts and tools that can contribute to the design of multifunctional landscapes that are better suited to capitalize on ecosystem services in conjunction with other land-use functions. The focus of the course will be on consumer-resource interactions underlying pollination and biocontrol services, the spatial ecology of pollinators and natural enemies, the impact of pest management practices on arthropod-mediated ecosystem services, and the design of multifunctional landscapes that support arthropod-mediated ecosystem services as well as other land-use functions.

Due to human land use and climate change, the world around us is changing rapidly. Natural vegetation and wildlife is challenged to adapt to these changes, but in many areas biodiversity is declining. The loss of biodiversity has been put forward as an underestimated driver of global change. The repercussions of these losses for ecosystem functioning and human well-being may be enormous.

In this workshop, participants will learn the principle of tidy data, how to transform and combine datasets using the tools from the tidyverse and how to generate advanced visualization with the ggplot2 package. The course will be a combination of lectures and practicals.

To date, many different scientific concepts and approaches of sustainability exist. What are the differences and what do they entail? What is your role as a scientist in achieving sustainable develop-ment? How can you apply sustainability in your own research? And in doing so, how can you deal with facts, uncertainty, values and opinions? This on-site course will enable you to think about the ‘bigger picture’, grasp sustainability and to apply concepts and approaches to your own research, in a collaborative learning environment, away from ‘office’. This course is organised by the Research School for Socio-Economic and Natural Sciences of the Environment (SENSE) and PE&RC, but coordinated by SENSE.

While much of statistics focusses on associations between variables and making predictions, the aim of structural equation modelling is to establish causal relationships between variables. The focus will be on classical structural equation models with a small number of (latent) variables, but we will also give an introduction to recent developments on methodology for high-dimensional data.

ISRIC - World Soil Information is organising the spring school on world soils and their assessment. The aim of this course is to introduce methods and software for the management, analysis and mapping of soil type and soil properties within the R environment for statistical computing.

This course introduces methods and software for management, analysis and mapping of soil type and soil properties within the R environment for statistical computing. After this course participants will be able to apply the methods learnt to their own datasets.

During the course, the participants will learn about the basic concepts of resilience and their application, from an interdisciplinary perspective. Accordingly, we will address how resilience theory can be used to tackle fundamental and societal issues from a socioeconomic and bio-physical perspective and will provide a critical reflection on the relevance, use, and applicability of the concept of resilience.

The aim of this course is to provide an introduction to R, a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. Focus of the course will be on getting familiar with the R environment, to use R for manipulation and exploration of data, and to perform simple statistical analyses. Hands-on exercises will form a large part of the workshop.

In this module we continue with Regression, ANOVA, and ANCOVA, set in the general framework of Linear Models. We look at topics like parameter estimation and interpretation, checking model assumptions, regression diagnostics, analysis of unbalanced designs and multiple comparisons.

Wageningen University is organising a laboratory skills course to define which measurements of soil biology are relevant for which soil functions. This course will provide the participants with an overview of a range of methods related to the five soil functions and will provide detailed practical training in a subset of measures.

The central theme of this course is the development of resilient seed systems (RSS) with participatory breeding programs (PPB) that are responsive to the needs of farmers and society as a whole. The focus is on longer-term solutions for sustainable, agro-ecological agriculture in the broad sense, departing from the underlying question: how to move food systems forward in the South and the North?

In this third edition of the European Forestry course, organised under the flag of the Euro League for Life Sciences (ELLS), we aim to shed light on the current management strategies of European forests, and how to adjust these to become climate-smart. There is much variation in forest management across Europe, at least in part based on differences in ecology, economics, social perceptions, ethics and morality towards forests and the resources and services they provide. The idea of this course is to bring PhD candidates and postdocs from various countries and cultural backgrounds, and working in different scientific disciplines but related to European forests, together in a professional on-site training course. The course will be organised at the BOKU training centre “Traunkirchen” in Austria. This venue is perfect for this course, as it sits in a location that is surrounded by forests that are managed in a varied way, so as to provide excellent learning experiences for the participants. A travel subsidy is available for PE&RC PhD candidates.

The course aims at assisting steps towards a holistic understanding of the complex social-ecological landscape that is the northern Maloti-Drakensberg. Centered on the Bergville/Mont-aux-Sources/Royal Natal National Park area, the course will provide an opportunity for an in-depth study of the ecological and social processes that drive change (for good or bad) in this region.