Ecology of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

During June, 2010 six wildlife students from Laramie, WY traveled to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks for a 10 day course on the Ecology of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The course focused on the vegetation, animals, geology, and management challenges concerning the parks. For each of the components, a student gave a brief introduction to the class on the topic we would be exploring that day. Students learned to identify trees using dichotomous keys and then spent the day in the field performing vegetation transects in recently burned to mature forests within the parks. Students then used their data sets to make inferences into species composition and the process of succession across the landscape. Students learned about individual tree life histories. including the role of serotiny in early forest successional stages following a fire