Feedback by Vasyl Mohytych

By Vasyl Mohytych 

From 28 July to 1 August 2025, I had the opportunity to participate in the summer school "Adapting Forests to Climate Change: Operationalising Assisted Migration", which took place in Traunkirchen, Austria. The course focused on modelling the response of tree species to current and future climate change scenarios, with an emphasis on incorporating genetic variation into these models.

The programme was well structured and balanced, combining insightful lectures with practical exercises. In my group, we focussed on Fagus sylvatica L. and dealt with data preparation, selection of climate variables and calibration of models. The coding sessions greatly improved my skills in creating species distribution models (SDMs) and calibrating universal response functions (URFs) with R.

A special part was the field trip to provenance trials, seed orchards and a commercial nursery. These examples provided valuable context and helped bridge the gap between model development and field application.

Throughout the week there was a very interactive and collaborative atmosphere with many opportunities to share ideas, receive constructive feedback and exchange ideas with colleagues and lecturers. The final group presentations provided a platform to present our analyses and reflect on model accuracy, data collection challenges and predictions for future provenance performance under climate scenarios.

This summer school came at a crucial time during my PhD. It provided me with practical tools and methods directly relevant to my work and stimulated ideas for possible future collaborations. I am sincerely grateful to the organisers and EVOLTREE for this enriching experience and would highly recommend it to anyone working on forest adaptation and climate resilience.