The International Laboratory of Landscape Ecology Held a Field School for Young Scientists in the Field of Landscape Science

From 2 to 7 September in the Central Forest Reserve (Tver region) a school for young researchers “Actual methods of landscape structure analysis based on remote sensing data, digital elevation models and field data” organized by the International Laboratory of Landscape Ecology was held. The School was attended by 24 students from 10 regions of the country, including three students from Belarus. The speakers of the School were the staff of the Laboratory, the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution Problems (A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution Problems, Moscow). A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IPEE RAS), Institute of Geography RAS (IG RAS), Central Forest Reserve.

During 5 days students and postgraduates from leading scientific and educational institutions got acquainted with the research infrastructure of the Reserve, listened to lectures and mastered new tools of spatial data processing. The School program included lectures on key problems of landscape organization and functioning: hierarchy, discreteness and continuity of landscape cover, invariant states and landscape thermodynamics. Also the participants of the School got acquainted with the principles of measuring the fluxes of matter and energy at the ecological-climatic stations of eddy covariance (ECS) functioning within the framework of the measurement program of the South Valdai Ecological Observatory Okovsky Forest IPEE RAS. The field part of the School included lectures at the ESCs in two typical and well-studied ecosystems of the Reserve: spruce spruce-blackberry forest and Staroselsky moss bog and a visit to the ESCs at a clearcut.

The main component of the School were master classes, during which the participants were trained in the application of remote sensing data analysis tools developed in the Laboratory in partnership with the IG and IPEE RAS to assess key properties of landscape structure and parameters of its functioning:

- analysis of hierarchical organization of the territory - plug-in for the open software platform QGIS Desktop “Fourier Transform”;

- isolation of invariant states of landscape cover based on series of multispectral remote sensing data - plug-in for QGIS “Principal Component Analysis (PCA)”;

- interpolation of discrete states (classes) of landscape properties and its components - plug-in for QGIS “Discriminant Analysis (DA)”;

- calculation of thermodynamic parameters of solar energy conversion using multispectral imagery of Landsat family in the framework of classical and non-extensive thermodynamics of Tsallis - plug-in for QGIS.

The School was completed by lectures and master classes on assessment of landscape-ecological metrics (in FRAGSTAT software) and methods of modeling species-environment relations.

As a result of the School, young researchers significantly expanded their understanding of the possibilities of using remotely sensed data and digital elevation models in analyzing the functioning and organization of landscape cover.