From 10 to 17 August, the Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the Estonian University of Life Sciences will host the ACT! Summer School. Master’s and doctoral students, along with early-career researchers, will come to Tartu to explore land-use and land-cover change in the context of climate change and biodiversity loss.
Land cover and land use are changing in cities, agricultural landscapes and natural areas. The summer school will look at how these changes can be identified, measured and analysed, and how research data can support land-use decisions and policy.
The programme combines lectures, practical workshops, field visits to case-study sites around Tartu and group work. Participants will work with satellite data, field observations and drone-derived data. Topics include spatial data processing, land-use modelling, biodiversity and climate-change scenarios, and the roles of people and institutions in shaping land use.
The programme includes satellite-based monitoring of land-use change, the use of agricultural land data, changes related to wildfires and wetlands, and drone-based spatial data collection. Practical workshops will use tools and resources including QGIS, Google Earth Engine, and Europe-LAND datasets and modelling tools.
Lecturers and experts will join the summer school from Estonia, India, Argentina, Slovakia, Poland, Latvia, Germany, Denmark, Czechia, Greece and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centrelink opens in new page (JRC). Experts from the Estonian University of Life Sciences will contribute knowledge in remote sensing, drones, landscape ecology, biodiversity, sustainable land use, citizen science and participatory research.
At the end of the summer school, the groups will present their research or solution proposals. Participants who complete the programme successfully will receive an ACT! Summer School certificate and two ECTS credits.
The ACT! Summer School is organised within the European Union-funded Europe-LAND and SUNRISE projects. It is also supported by The Baltic University Programme and CS4Change, funded by the Estonian Research Council.
Some summer school sessions can be followed online from 10 to 12 August. Registration for the online sessions is open until 7 August.
More information: pk.emu.ee/actlink opens in new page
Editor
Head of Communications, Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Administration of the Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
53312928
53312928More information:
Senior Research Fellow in Environmental Governance
Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
Chair of Environmental Protection and Landscape Management
