The Wind River Canopy Crane gave us a bird's eye view of cutting edge forest research. What kind of research is conducted in your area? What technologies are being used? How are you using this research in your community or program? How do you think that research and teaching are connected?
Friday, July 27, 2007
Research, Technology, and the Passion for Teaching
The Wind River Canopy Crane gave us a bird's eye view of cutting edge forest research. What kind of research is conducted in your area? What technologies are being used? How are you using this research in your community or program? How do you think that research and teaching are connected?
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Thank you all for such a wonderful week. I will try to catch up on my blogging as I had so much fun visiting with you all.
As promises.. and part of the use of technology, here are Eva's websites in danish and the website for "translating" danish to english.
Eva's sites: http://www.skoven-i-skolen.dk/
http://www.udeskole.dk/
Here is the "translation" site:
http://www.translation-guide.com/free_online_translators.php?from=Danish&to=English
It is a very loose translation and you will only get a "sense" of the meaning. You will also need to do some creative interpretation which is great fun. But it is a start to accessing some of the wonderful material from Denmark. To use the website, open the link below and also open a Danish site. Cut and paste the link you are interested in the box that is below URL and click the button for URL (if you do not click the button and turn on the dot for URL, it will not work.) Then press the translate button at the bottom of the box. I will take awhile to translate and you will have to move around the screen. I had to scroll to the far right to see the English version. Good luck.. and thank you Eva for sharing.
I was very much impressed with the work at Wind River. I really enjoyed the attempt to learn EVERYTHING about the whole system. Nature is so wonderfully interconnected.
We have much research going on in our area from Hubbard Brook in NH (similar to Wind River) . Carlos will be doing some research in a forest in Durham NH nearby as well. At the Land Lab we have webcams on our birdfeeder and in a nesting box. You can check them out on our website: http://landlab.auburnschl.edu
They could be used to do all kinds of action research.. Comparing our birds to yours, Seasonal differences, behaviour, food preferences, etc. Let me know if you get any students involved in watching our birds.
Maine PLT is also starting a national (international?) project to get students to set up and measure forest growth plots and share it online. I will try to keep you posted as it would be great fun to have schools all over the world sharing data.
http://www.mainetreefoundation.org/programs/fig.htm
I am going to this workshop and will share with you the results.
Thanks Jim for your nestbox (note: not bird house:) ) site. Those are always great. Here in Portland we have several of those throughout the year.
I went to school at the UW and heard about the canopy crane for several years (read 6). The first time I went up it was like a religious experience. Things that I had read about for years here in front of me.. . When we went up I noticed you all had that dreamy far away look in your eyes. It is the look that I love to see in the eyes of my students when I am no longer the focus but the landscape is. Pretty Awesome Huh? Hope you all loved it.
The visit to the crane was amazing. Even though I've been there before never got a ride in the tower. This crane is the only one in North America, but there are several other sites around the world where scientists are measuring the rates of carbon and water exchange between the forest and the atmosphere. All sites are usually part of a large network of sites. Visit the Ameriflux or Fluxnet websites to find a tower near the forest of your area.
http://www.fluxnet.ornl.gov/fluxnet/graphics.cfm
http://public.ornl.gov/ameriflux/site-select.cfm
Thanks Carlos. Those are great sites.
We are using that research in our museum everyday. Our canopy lift ride (sorry you didn't get to experience that) is a replica of the one at wind river. It is meant to be a simulation of the "ride to the top". That information was used as the museum was being remodeled and incorporated into several exhibits. We try to pull directly from the science community for our programs. I am hoping to take that one step further and create some hands on science programs at our tree farm.
That sounds interesting Jill. Let me know if you'd like some help with the science part.
Well… it seems that there isn’t so much wish and will to communicate and even I noticed that my last comment is missing. So… I will try to be a good boy and finish my comments’ session… better later than never… yes? :) Actually Friday was the last day of our cool event when I greatly enjoyed the Wind River Canopy Crane. Actually we don’t have such cool research facilities in my country and I am pretty sure we will not have for a quite long time. Probably it is not necessary to think everywhere and ever about money… but just to give you an idea what financial gap is between forest science and research in US and Lithuania I will provide several numbers. As I heard the construction cost of Canopy Crane was something close to 650 000 US$. In order to make it fully operational (additional equipment, camp facility, software, hardware and etc.) the total price of the site increased to 1.5 million dollars. In order to maintain it properly it is spent close to 0.5 million dollars annually. Well… in comparison I can say, that annual budged of Forestry faculty I study is close to 0.1 million dollars. So… you can make your own observations. Turning out from numbers… I liked the feeling being in a cage and greatly enjoyed the moments when being in motion I looked at moving canopies of trees because of wind and got into troubles to understand trees or I move for a microsecond. :) Probably the first Newton’s law worked well. :) And ending I want to say that we were very lucky because of possibility to visit this great site and familiarize with projects scientists do there. It was a real pleasure to meet all of you and spend one week together at Pacific Northwest. Maybe we will meet again maybe not… but if you ever feel I can help you with something… feel free to remind me what we did this summer. All the best from Lithuanian guy.
Hello all,
I am still basking in the glow of our wonderful week together. The canopy crane experience was unbelievable!! I feel that my job is to foster life long learning in my students. The canopy crane, and other research facilities, are proof positive that learning never ends. This is indeed the best lesson I will take back to my students.
...and also, teaching a guy from China to say "Yee Haw!" was one of the funnest things I have done :) I sure hope he doesn't get beat up in a bar somewhere in Wyoming!
Cheers!
Hazel
I too, thoroughly enjoyed my experience with you guys in Oregon. The Wind River Crane was one of my favorite things that we did. Some really cool things are going on there! I can't wait to share all the things that I learned/did with my fellow teachers and students. I truly hope that we can stay in touch and help each other to learn about and appreciate environments from all over the world.
Nepal has many wilderness areas, parks and hunting reserves. Mount everest at 8,852 meters is the highest. But there are other 10 majestic mountains over 8,000 meters all over Nepal. There are 1,300 mountains over 6,500 meters and 1,700 over 5,500 meters.
Mountains in other parts of the world are called hills in Nepal. There are now 17 National Parks and some of them attract over half a million visitiors. These are Everest National Parks; Annapurna National Parks; Chitwan National Parks and others..
Each park showcases either some peculiar ecosystems or a collection of animals and birds sanctury.
Naturally Nepal has a good video and slides of these places which you may be able to access electronically.
I will give you the link later
Deepak
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