Graduate Environmental Program

The Oxford University (UK) Continuing Professional Development Centre is running a short course:

Field Techniques for Surveying Vegetation, 5 weeks online from 1 June 2009.
A postgraduate-level training course which is taught entirely online. It can be taken from anywhere in the world and is international in its use of case studies. It will appeal to a variety of students and practitioners in conservation and management who want to improve their ability to conduct vegetation surveys. The topics covered in the course are:

• rationale for surveying vegetation;
• choosing a vegetation survey technique;
• structural methods of vegetation description; floristic methods of vegetation sampling;
•  overview of quadrats and plotless sampling;
• quantitative measures;
• vegetation monitoring, permanent quadrats and vegetation mapping;
• sampling strategy or protocol;
• recording and storing data.