Winter Semester in Germany

At the moment of writing this post the number of infections of coronavirus in Germany is rising again. The winter semester is coming to an end and most of it has been in lockdown.

Despite of this the students in Germany were able to experience first-hand some of the issues that were studied in the courses. For instance the University of Freiburg offers a course together with the Agro-Paris tech, other university of the consortium. The course is about the forest practices in France and Germany, with an special focus in the Black forest and the Vosgues (In the French side) the problems what are arise and how they are addressed.

The Black Forest is a forested mountain range in Southwestern Germany, it covers around 600.000 Ha from which 65 % are forests.

As it is already known, a very actual issue that the Black forest faces is the climate change, these last years the droughts in central Europe became more frequent and more intense and the forest species struggle to adapt and in some cases they die, at the university of Freiburg silvicultural approaches to adapt forests to climate change are studied, among the the mixing of forest species and the use of better adapted provenances.

When hiking around the Black forests, which is all around Freiburg we were able to see by ourselves this situation, so we can learn forestry without the need of presencial classes.

#Written by Gerardo Rodas

MSc European Forestry, University of Freiburg