Program Overview

Program Overview

The MSc Programme in Forest and Nature Management is designed to equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to manage forest and nature areas in a sustainable way. The program focuses on the complexity of planning and the challenges of managing these areas, taking into account commercial and non-commercial values, environmental issues, and community needs.

Program Description

The program introduces students to Structured Decision Making, an organized approach to developing and evaluating creative alternatives and making defensible choices. It combines analytical methods from decision analysis with insights into human judgments and behavior. Students will learn to quantify and model ecosystem services and include them in the forest and nature management plan.

Learning Outcomes

The program aims to provide students with the following knowledge, skills, and competences:

• Knowledge: Understand a natural science management planning approach, explain the principles of sustainable utilization, protection, and stewardship of forests and other semi-natural areas, and summarize potentials/restrictions and sustainability of utilization of biological systems.
• Skills: Apply a social science management planning approach, apply structured environmental decision making approaches, and develop long-term strategies, operational objectives, and specific plans for sustainable utilization and protection of forests and other green resources.
• Competences: Transfer the use of structured decision making, economic theory, and methods in management planning for forests and natural resources to other planning problems and situations, and cooperate and work effectively in a group with a common economic planning project.

Literature

Teaching material will be announced, mostly consisting of journal papers accessible through university library facilities.

Recommended Academic Qualifications

It is recommended to have competences within fields such as ecology and management of forests and other semi-natural terrestrial ecosystems, applied economics of forest and nature, and natural resource sampling and modelling. Academic qualifications equivalent to a BSc degree are recommended.

Teaching and Learning Methods

The program includes plenary lectures, field trips, theoretical exercises, and group work. Students will prepare a forest and nature management project for a real-world case, with milestones presented during the course.

Workload

The workload is distributed as follows:

• Lectures: 80 hours
• Preparation: 73 hours
• Practical exercises: 30 hours
• Excursions: 25 hours
• Project work: 170 hours
• Guidance: 4 hours
• Exam: 30 hours
• Total: 412 hours

Exam

The exam is an individual oral examination, 30 minutes in total, based on the forest and nature management project report and compulsory material. No time for preparation is allowed. All aids are permitted, and the marking scale is a 7-point grading scale with external censorship.

Course Information

• Language: English
• Course code: LNAK10098U
• Credit: 15 ECTS
• Level: Full Degree Master
• Duration: 1 block
• Placement: Block 4
• Schedule: Teaching activities take place out of course structure, with the course plan available at least two weeks prior to Block 4.

Study Board and Contracting Department

The study board is the Study Board of Natural Resources, Environment and Animal Science, and the contracting department is the Department of Food and Resource Economics, under the Faculty of Science.

Course Coordinators

The course coordinators are Henrik Meilby and Niels Strange.