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The
World is Your Classroom
VT Urban Forestry
Students Hit the Streets |
| Students
enrolled in the Urban Forest Management and Policy class offered
through the Forestry Department at Virginia Tech are currently working on
partial street tree inventories for communities in Virginia and Maryland.
One of the assignments for the class is a term project intended to expose
students to one of the most important tools communities have to manage the
urban forest. As professional urban foresters know, it's almost
impossible to manage their community's trees without knowing something about
them.
In a community of their choice, students are inventorying a small sample
of at least 50 trees that come from 2 different zoning types and 4 different
streets. Most students are working in their hometowns, although some
whose homes are too far have chosen communities closer to Virginia Tech.
In addition to taking species, DBH, and condition ratings for the trees,
some students prescribe work for the trees they inventory. Some
students are using spreadsheet software to compile tree information, others
are trying a free inventory software (MCTI) that can be downloaded from the
website
http://www.umass.edu/urbantree/mcti/index.htm
.
Students also work with the community's urban forester, arborist, or
horticulturist to answer several questions related to tree management.
This gives students an opportunity to interact with professionals in the
field, who bring experience that supplements classroom learning. Many
students who learn more by "doing" than by reading, gain much deeper
understanding of urban forest management through this type of project.
The final component of the project, in addition to a written report of
the findings, is a class presentation, where students are encouraged to use
their findings to, "make a pitch for urban forest management, and how
important it is for communities," according to Professor Brian Kane, who
developed the course at Virginia Tech. One student remarked that the
project was pretty interesting and useful, as it recreated a real-world
situation that many urban foresters face.
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900 Natural Resources Drive, Ste 800