This course is intended for graduate students, M.Sc. and PhD, and will offer hands-on experience with collecting and exploring plant functional traits data in a real-life field research project setting. The course will also include an introduction to the use of plant trait data in climate-change research and ecosystem ecology.
TraitTrain4 will address several core scientific questions with an emphasis on key skills, including:
- Collecting original data in the field
- Developing data management skills
- Developing computational and statistical skills
- Generating data summaries and basic hypothesis tests.
Participants will be introduced to the environmental, ecological, and taxonomic diversity of the region, and will be involved in one of the following projects:
- Assessing the role of climate and biotic factors in determining plant community leaf trait composition
- Assessing how temperature variation and leaf functional traits influence leaf ecophysiology
- Using a trait-based approach to assess how local plant communities and populations respond to experimental climate and grazing treatments
- Measuring how functional trait composition influences ecosystem functioning by measuring carbon dioxide (CO2)-flux within and across plant communities.
More information in UArctic Course Catalogue and course homepage.