2024-2025 / FORE0041-1

Forest health

Duration

40h Th, 7h Pr, 10h FT

Number of credits

 Master in forests and natural areas engineering, professional focus6 crédits 

Lecturer

Hugues Claessens, Frédéric Francis, Simon Lhoest, Sébastien Massart

Coordinator

Hugues Claessens

Language(s) of instruction

French language

Organisation and examination

Teaching in the first semester, review in January

Schedule

Schedule online

Units courses prerequisite and corequisite

Prerequisite or corequisite units are presented within each program

Learning unit contents

The course covers forest health, forest management in health crises, and the One Health approach. It is divided into the following sections:

  • Ecosystem resilience and temperate forest health;
  • Abiotic causes of forest declinee;
  • Forest pests;
  • Forest tree pathogens and diseases;
  • Diagnosis of weakened trees;
  • Forest health monitoring and pest control strategies;
  • Forest health crisis management;
  • One Health approach integrating ecosystem, animal and human health.

Learning outcomes of the learning unit

At the end of the course, the student will be able to:

  • Identify abiotic, biotic and anthropogenic risks to trees, ecosystems and forest production and understand the complexity of interactions in the forest ecosystem.

  • diagnose the health problems of a tree or stand and recognise the main forest bio-aggressors (pests and pathogens)

  • Know the methods for preventing and managing health problems (prevention, monitoring, control and crisis management)

  • Understand the many interactions between the health of ecosystems, animals and humans

Prerequisite knowledge and skills

Identification of forest tree species; basic knowledge in entomology, ecology and site characterisation.

Planned learning activities and teaching methods

  • Lectures;
  • Field work: tree health assessment, insect trapping and disease sampling;
  • Laboratory: insects and disease identification;
  • Flipped classroom and interdisciplinary document synthesis (One Health);
  • Team work in pairs.

Mode of delivery (face to face, distance learning, hybrid learning)

Face-to-face course


Additional information:

Course materials are provided in pdf format and will be placed online on eCampus.

Course materials and recommended or required readings

Course materials (slides, podcasts) are available on eCampus

The following documents will allow to gain further knowledge. Their use is highly recommended but optional. They are available in the library or online.

Exam(s) in session

Any session

- In-person

oral exam

Written work / report


Further information:

The assessment is based on:

  • Presentation and defense of the team work (30%, during the course);
  • Report on practical work in phytopathology laboratory (10%, during the course);
  • Oral examination, with a 20-minute preparation (60 %, during the January session).
Based on a real-life situation, the oral examination will assess, among other things, the student's ability to diagnose a health problem, place it in its context and propose the implementation of concrete management actions.

Work placement(s)

Organisational remarks and main changes to the course

Contacts

Hugues Claessens (coordinator)

Francis Frédéric

Lhoest Simon

Massart Sébastien


University of Liege - Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech
2, Passage des Déportés,
5030 Gembloux (Belgium)
http://www.gembloux.ulg.ac.be/gf 

Association of one or more MOOCs