Topics in Ecological Action: Invasive Plants Management

This course uses foundational ecological knowledge to focus on non-native terrestrial plants found on the Craftsbury campus and to build an understanding of landscape conditions that allow these plants’ proliferation.  Hands-on involvement with campus forest management  brings students from species identification and botanical traits through an understanding of the plants’ ecological functions and the full range of current management strategies. Some exposure to off-campus projects broadens student knowledge and to include aquatic plants. Management practiced will include monitoring, manual removal, cutting, grazing, and other biological strategies. The ideas of adapting our practices to live with the new species as well as the use of herbicides will be discussed. Critical observation skills will be honed as students engage in monitoring experiments to test the effectiveness of the various approaches. Students with previous GIS skills can apply them by mapping plant and plot locations.