Trees For Rehabilitation (Reafforestation)

Would you like to work in a field that helps the environment?  Environmental rehabilitation of degraded landscapes and contaminated sites is an important and growing field - this course covers the fundamentals required to start or advance your career.

Student Comment: 'I definitely learned a lot from [the course) but it was also beneficial in affirming [and raising my confidence] in what I already knew.' Katrina Merrifield, Masters Conservation Science, NZ, Trees for Rehabilitation course.

The significance of caring for the environment has been receiving more and more attention in recent times as we come to understand the importance of limited resources and the effects of human activities on the environment. The desertification, erosion and general degradation of once fertile lands is prompting us to investigate why and how these processes have occurred. It has also lead to research into how we can reverse and stop further damage to our environment.

Natural forests are amongst the most stable and productive ecosystems. We need to plant and conserve forests for their conservation value, to help maintain healthy air, soil and water and for their potential to provide food, forage, fuel, timber and even medicines.

This course is designed for people working or wanting to work with environmental rehabilitation and contaminated sites recovery. It develops an understanding of environmental systems and the rehabilitation of degraded landscapes. You will learn about seed collection, storage and germination, propagation, plant selection, establishment techniques, and controlling pest and disease after planting.

Lesson Structure

There are 10 lessons in this course:

1. Approaches To Land Rehabilitation
2. Ecology Of Soils And Plant Health
3. Introduction To Seed Propagation Techniques
4. Propagation And Nursery Stock.
5. Dealing With Chemical Problems
6. Physical Plant Effects On Degraded Sites
7. Plant Establishment Programs
8. Hostile Environments
9. Plant Establishment Care
10. Rehabilitating Degraded Sites

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the school, marked by the school's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

Aims

• Compare different approaches to land rehabilitation, to determine strengths and weaknesses of alternative options on a site to be rehabilitated.
• Determine techniques to maximise plant development in land rehabilitation situations.
• Explain the different ways of producing seedling trees for land rehabilitation purposes.
• Determine appropriate plant establishment programs.
• Develop procedures to care for plants, during establishment in an hostile environment.
• Manage the rehabilitation of degraded soil.
• Explain the effect of plants on improving a degraded site, both physically and chemically.

What You Will Do

• Determine ten different examples of land degradation on sites visited by you.
• Explain different reasons for land requiring rehabilitation, including:
  • Salination
  • Erosion
  • Mining
  • Grazing
  • Vegetation harvesting
  • Pests
  • Reduction of biodiversity
  • Soil contamination
  • Urbanisation.
• Compare the effectiveness of different policy approaches to land rehabilitation by different agencies and organisation, including:
  • Different levels of government
  • Mining companies
  • Developers
  • Conservation groups (i.e. tree planting bodies, landcare groups).
• Develop a risk analysis for a specified site to be rehabilitated, by determining a variety of plant health problems which may impact on the success of plant establishment.
• Analyse the failure of plants to grow successfully on a visited land rehabilitation site.
• Develop a procedure to enhance the success rate of land rehabilitation plantings on a degraded site visited by you.
• Describe the use of mulches, to maximise plant condition in a specified land rehabilitation tree planting project.
• Explain different processes of establishing seedlings on land rehabilitation sites, including:
  • tubestock nursery production
  • direct seeding
  • pre-germinated bare rooted seedlings.
• Determine factors which affect the viability of establishing five different species of plant seedlings, from five different plant families; on a specific degraded site.
• Compare the benefits of acquiring plants for a project by buying tubestock, with propagating and growing on, or close to, the planting site, with reference to:
  • costs
  • plant quality
  • local suitability
  • management.
• Prepare production schedules for a plant species, using different propagation techniques, summarising all important tasks from collection of seed to planting out of the tubestock.
• Calculate the cost of production for a tubestock plant, according to the production schedule developed by you.
• Estimate the differences in per plant establishment costs, for tubestock, compared with direct seeding methods, for planting on a degraded site.
• Describe three different methods of planting trees for rehabilitation purposes.
• Describe different plant establishment techniques, including:
  • wind protection
  • frost protection
  • pest control
  • water management
  • weed management.
• Describe an appropriate method for preparing soil for planting, at a proposed land rehabilitation site in your locality.
• Evaluate plant establishment techniques used by two different land rehabilitation programs inspected by you at least twelve months after planting was carried out.
• Determine the needs of plants after planting, on two different proposed land rehabilitation sites.
• Describe two different, efficient ways, of catering to the needs of large numbers of plants after planting.
• Collect pressed specimens or photographs of twenty trees for a herbarium of suitable trees for rehabilitation, and including information on the culture and care of each tree.
• Describe different types of soil degradation, detected in your locality.
• Determine the risk factors involved in soil degradation, relevant to your locality.
• Compare two different alternative methods of treating each of three different soil degradation problems identified and inspected by you.
• Develop an assessment form to use for evaluating the sensitivity of a site to land degradation.
• Evaluate a site showing signs of degradation, selected by you, using the assessment form you developed.
• Plan a rehabilitation program for the degraded site you evaluated, including
  • a two year schedule of work to be completed
  • list of quantity and type of materials required
  • approximate cost estimates.
• Explain the effect six different plant species may have resisting soil degradation.
• Explain how different plants can have different impacts upon the chemistry of their environment, including both air and soil.
• Evaluate the significance of a group of plants, to the nature of the microclimate in which you find them growing.
• Compare the appropriateness of twenty different plant species for different degraded sites.
• Determine five plant varieties, suited to each of six different degradation situations.

FREQUENT QUESTIONS

Why Choose This Course

• Unique course materials (developed by our staff) and more current than some colleges (many reviewed annually); as a result, ACS graduates can be more up to date.
• We work hard to help you understand and remember it, develop an ability to apply it in the real world, and build networks with others who work in this field (It’s more than just serving up a collection of information –if all you want is information, buy a book; but if you want an education, that takes learning to a whole new level).
• Start whenever you want, study at your own pace, study anywhere
• Don’t waste time and money traveling classes
• We provide more choices–courses are written to allow you more options to focus on parts of the subject that are of more interest to you; a huge range of elective subjects are offered that don’t exist elsewhere.
• Tutors are accessible (more than elsewhere) – academics work in both the UK and Australia, 5 days a week, 16 hours a day. Answering emails and phone calls from students are top priority.
• We treat students as individuals –don’t get lost in a crowd. Our tutors communicate with you one to one.
• Extra help at no extra cost if needed. When you find something you cannot do, we help you through it or will provide another option.
• Support after you finish a course –We can advise about getting work, starting  business, writing a CV, etc. We can promote students and their businesses through our extensive profile on the internet. Graduates who ask will be helped.
• Support from a team of a dozen professional horticulturists, living in different parts of the UK, and in both temperate and tropical climate zones of Australia.

About ACS

ACS was started in 1979 by John Mason, who at the time was a gardening author, horticultural consultant and lecturer in horticulture at several colleges across Melbourne (in Australia).  Over the summer that year John discovered that there were thousands of applicants going to be turned away from horticulture courses at Burnley Horticultural College (now Melbourne University). There were simply too few courses being offered for the number of people wanting to study horticulture in Australia. This situation prompted a move to establish a correspondence course at Burnley; but after months of unsuccessful lobbying for support from government; John wrote a course, and with help from a colleague at Council of Adult Education, marketed it.

Standards were originally set in line with what were seen to be the standards of Australia's top horticultural college; and over the years, those standards have never been reduced. This makes our courses longer and more demanding than some other colleges; but it has also led to us building a credibility that stands tall in the horticulture industry across the world. 

In the early 1990's John started visiting the UK and becoming involved with the horticulture industry there. Around the mid 1990's ACS began offering RHS courses, and in 2003, John was formally recognised for his contribution to British Horticulture by being made a fellow of the Institute of Horticulture. ACS, as a school, established an office and staff in the UK in 2001, and has expanded considerably since then. Today it is formally affiliated with five other colleges in the UK (including Warwickshire College); all of who license and deliver ACS courses. 

A team of leading horticulturists work for the school's horticulture department, including 12 faculty members in both the UK and Australia

How You Study

• As soon as you enroll, we send an email to explain it all.
• We direct you to a short orientation video (downloadable over the internet) to watch, where our principal introduces you to how the course works, and how you can access all sorts of support services
• You are either given a code to access your course online, or sent out a CD or course materials through the mail (or by courier).
• Work through lessons one by one, each lesson typically having four parts:
• An aim -which tells you what you should be achieving in the lesson
• Reading -notes written and regularly revised by our academic staff
• Set Task(s) -These are practicals, research or other experiential learning tasks that strengthen and add to what you have been reading
• Assignment -By answering questions, submitting them to a tutor, then getting feedback from the tutor, you confirm that you are on the right track, but more than that, you are guided to consider what you have been studying in different ways, broadening your perspective and reinforcing what you are learning about
• Other - Your work in a course rarely stops at just the above four parts. Different courses and different students will need further learning experiences. Your set task or assignment may lead to other things, interacting with tutors or people in industry, reviewing additional reference materials or something else. We treat every student as an individual and supplement their learning needs as the occasion requires.
• We provide access to and encourage you to use a range of supplementary services including an online student room, including online library; student bookshop, newsletters, social media etc.
• We provide a "student manual", that is a quick solution to most problems that might occur

Recognition

• ACS has a highly respected international profile: by employers and academics alike. People are more aware of us than many other distance education schools –just do a search for “horticulture distance education courses” and see what comes up on the internet; or search for ACS Distance education on Facebook or Linked in, and see how many connections we have compared to other colleges.
• Recognised by International Accreditation and Recognition Council
• ACS has been educating people around the world since 1979
• Over 100,000 have now studied ACS courses, across more than 150 countries
• Formal affiliations with colleges in five countries
• A faculty of over 40 internationally renowned academics –books written by our staff used by universities and colleges around the world.

Extra Books or Reference Materials

• The course provides you with everything that you need to complete it successfully.
• Assignments may ask you to look for extra information (eg. by contacting nurseries, visiting gardens or searching the internet), but our school's resources and tutors are always available as a back up. If you hit a "roadblock", we can quickly send you additional information or provide expert advice over the phone or email; to keep you moving in your studies.
• Some students choose to buy additional references, to take their learning beyond what is essential for the course. If a student wants to buy books, we operate an online bookshop offering ebooks written by staff at the school. Student discounts are available if you are studying with us. The range of e books available is being expanded rapidly, with at least one new ebook being written and published by our staff every month. See www.acsebook.com

Visit the ACS online bookstore for books related to this subject