Teaching - Classroom support – meeting course objectives:
During the academic year, we support several courses in the College of Natural Resources. Each of these classes expose students to the Geospatial Learning Center and various GIS and Remote Sensing software packages available to meet the course objectives.

ForP 231 Forest Measurement Techniques

For 204 Introduction to Natural Resources

For 274 Forest Measurements Techniques

Wlf 315 Wildlife Ecology

Rnge 357 Rangeland & Riparian Habitat Assessment

For 375 Aerial Photo Interpretation of Renewable Natural Resources

RRT 386 Resource Recreation and Tourism Planning

NR 402 GIS Applications in Natural Resources (fall and spring)

NR506 Advanced Applications in Fire Ecology and Management (fall)

NR 505 Advanced GIS Applications in Wildlife Sciences (spring)

RNGE 504 Introduction to AML Programming

For 427 Wildland Fire Management and Ecology - Fire lab

For429 Landscape Ecology

For 424 Silviculture II

Wlf 440 Concervation Biology

CNR 470 Interdiciplinary Natural Resource Planning

For 472 Remote Sensing of the Environment

Rnge454 Weed Management

Rnge452 World Biomes; North American Ecosystems

Soils 454 Soil Development and Classification

RRT 571 Human Dimensions of Ecosystem Management

For 527 Landscape Ecology of Forests and Rangelands

For 572 Spatial and Biophysical Modeling

For 504 Advanced Methods in Remote Sensing

REM501 Policy, Law and Management

Graduate Student Support
The Geospatial Learning Center is open to graduate students within the CNR.

The Geospatial Teaching Center offers frequent workshops in GIS, GPS and Remote Sensing.

Workshops and outreach of the past

Ecological Modeling Workshop

March 14-18, 2005
Spring Break

Instructor: Dr. Tony Starfield

Location: RSGIS Teachinglab CNR, room 26, University of Idaho

Dr. Tony Starfield is a professor at the Ecology, Evolution and Behavior Department at the University
of Minnesota. This course focuses on techniques and concepts of modeling for natural resource issues.
Participants need not be skilled in mathematics or computing.

Objectives:

	Discover how to use models in planning for ecology and conservation biology with defensible results.
	Learn how to incorporate a pragmatic modeling approach to data collection methods and data analysis.
	Design management-oriented modeling environments.
	Use simple models for decision-making and avoid the trap of obligating a large investment in money and effort without understanding how effective the investment will be.

Cost: $400.00 (UI budget numbers, Credit Card or Check)
Registration: email Eva Strand (evas@uidaho.edu)
Registration includes notes, handouts, and two books by Dr. Starfield (How to Model It, Building Models)
Full time UI students will be able to take this course for 1 credit as a special topics course through the College of
Natural Resources at the University of Idaho.

Tentative schedule

Day 1
Introduction to Modeling: Spread-sheet and other exercises that illustrate the modeling process, terminology,
deterministic and stochastic models, what to leave out of a model, scale and resolution, age or stage structured
models, modeling without good data.

Day 2
Decision Analysis: Decision trees, decision-making under uncertainty, linear programming and where it fits,
multi-objective decision-making, soft versus hard approaches.

Day 3
Expert Systems (morning): What they are, developing small expert systems, where they might be useful,
importance of explanations. Introduction to Ecosystem Modeling (afternoon): Single patch system models,
Markov models, state and transition models.

Day 4
Ecosystem Modeling continued: Frame-based modeling, the incremental top-down approach, qualitative
models, using other people’s models, adaptive management.

Day 5
Spatially Explicit Models: Cellular automata, fire-spread models, animal movement models, models involving
climate change, where GIS fits.

Selected publications by Dr. Tony Starfield:

Rupp, T.S., Chapin, F.S. III. , Starfield, A.M., Response of subarctic vegetation to transient climatic change
on the Seward Peninsula in north-west Alaska, Global change biology. Glob. chang. biol.
June 2000. v. 6 (5) p. 541-555.

Epstein, H.E. Walker, M.D., Chapin, F.S. III., Starfield, A.M., A transient, nutrient-based model of arctic
plant community response to climatic warming., Ecological applications June 2000. v. 10 (3), p. 824-841

Hahn, B.D., Richardson, F.D., Starfield, A.M. Frame-based modelling as a method of simulating
rangeland production systems in the long term.Agricultural systems, Oct 1999. v. 62 (1), p. 29-49.

Starfield, A.M. Chapin, F.S. III. Model of transient changes in arctic and boreal vegetation in response
to climate and land use change. Ecological applications, Aug 1996. v. 6 (3) p. 842-864.

Turner, M.G.,Collins, S.L.,Lugo, A.E.,Magnuson, J.J., Rupp, T.S., Swanson, F.J., Disturbance dynamics
and ecological response: the contribution of long-term ecological research BioScience. Bioscience
Jan 2003. v. 53 (1) p. 46-56.

Starfield, A.M. Cumming, D.H.M., Taylor, R.D., Quadling, M.S. A frame-based paradigm for dynamic
ecosystem models. AI applications., 1993. v. 7 (2/3), p. 1-13.
Location: Stacks Call Number: QA76.76.E95A5

Tester, J.R., A.M. Starfield, L.E. Frelich, 1997. Modeling for ecosystem management in Minnesota
pine forests, Biological Conservation, 80:313-324.

Nicolson CR, Starfield AM, Kofinas GP, Kruse JA, 2002. Ten heuristics for interdisciplinary
modeling projects ECOSYSTEMS 5 (4): 376-384 JUN 2002

Cost: $400.00
Registration: email Eva Strand (evas@uidaho.edu)