Concentration Overview

Useful Resources

Forest and Wildlife Sciences are unique in that the faculty have maintained a distinction between Forest Science and Wildlife Science to allow students to identify themselves, and research can still follow these traditional lines. However, the faculty have chosen to collaborate and have meetings as a whole to encourage more interdisciplinary work.

Students wishing to concentrate in the area of Forest Science can study a diversity of topics ranging from sustainable forestry to stress ecology of forest ecosystems. Professors Keeton, Hughes, Schaberg, Capen, Wallin, and Wang have been actively advising students in thesis and project topics that can be viewed under the link to recent research publications. Other faculty affiliated with the concentrations have been important contributors to students' Graduate Studies Committees.

A recent initiative headed by its director, David Brynn, is entitled the Green Forestry Education Initiative. This exciting opportunity has been funded by an external grant to the School and focuses on studying and promoting "sustainable" forestry with a variety of approaches.

Wildlife Science has a long history at the University of Vermont. Current faculty are engaged in research or management projects that center around terrestrial ecosystems: the processes that drive these systems, their management, and their conservation. Faculty expertise spans a diversity of disciplines and includes interdisciplinary research. Thus, topics students work on vary broadly and include population dynamics, sustainable forest ecosystem management, wildlife behavior, wildlife-habitat relationships, and landscape ecology. Some students, however, might pursue research projects on wildlife species that occur in wetlands or other aquatic environments; there is also faculty expertise in these disciplines and involvement with faculty in other concentrations is likely (e.g., Aquatic Ecology and Watershed Science).

Students focusing on Wildlife Science have been involved in the following topics through thesis or project work:

• Effects of agricultural management on wildlife populations
• Trophic level interactions
• Effects of land use change on wildlife populations
• Avian foraging ecology
• Effects of forest structure on carnivore populations
• Habitat associations of wetland-dependent bird communities
• Predicting species occurrences through remote sensin
• Predicting biodiversity through landscape analysis
• Genetics of black bear populations
• Habitat use by Indiana bats

For more information about Forest and Wildlife Sciences, please contact:
Carolyn Goodwin-Kueffner, Graduate Program Student Services Specialist
cgoodwin@uvm.edu

Specific requirements

General requirements and additional information in the UVM online catalogue