This tutorial discusses the concept of forest succession, the stages of development which forest plants follow as they grow or re-grow following an event such as a forest fire or insect infestation. Topics include the role of pioneer species, the transition to longer-lived plants such as lodgepole pine, Douglas fir, and subalpine fir, and the transition to climax species such as cedars, hemlocks and ... Full description.

This tutorial explores the adaptation of plants in their local environments by investigating examples of species native to British Columbia. Examples include adaptations such as large size (Sequoia trees), long life (bristlecone pines), fast growth (aspens), and thick bark (Ponderosa pines). There is an explanation of how plants absorb carbon dioxide give off oxygen, and draw nutrients and water from ... Full description.

This tutorial introduces students to global weather patterns and how they affect the kinds of trees and plants that grow in different latitudes of the Earth. The discussion covers the tropics and the lush rainforests that live there, temperate forests in the mid-latitudes, and boreal forests in the far north. There is also a description of how treeless areas occur in various climate zones (desert, ... Full description.

Humans have had a greater impact on forests than on other land ecosystems. This interactive feature uses NASA satellite images taken between 1984 and 2000 to demonstrate just how much of a once densely forested region in Bolivia has been cleared for commercial purposes. Users can view the images as an animation, or click on individual images taken every two years to see the stages of the deforestation. ... Full description.

This site contains vegetation maps for regions across the world. The maps are categorized by continent or region and then broken down into country and some are broken into sections within a particular country. Some maps are created from Geographic Information Systems (GIS) while some are vegetation indices as calculated from remotely sensed data. Some are the result of vegetation analyses or inventories ... Full description.

In this activity, students investigate the effects of automobile pollution on plant growth by making measurements on two populations of leaves, one from within 10 meters of a busy road and a population of the same species situated more than 20 meters away. They will choose a method for measuring the leaves, create a table for their data, and test their hypotheses by performing a t-test. Full description.

This portal provides information on the environmental issues and research projects being conducted in Redwood National and State Parks. The Redwood Field Station, part of the United States Geological Survey's (USGS) Western Ecological Research Center, is involved with restoration of the physical and biological landscapes in the parks, including inventory and monitoring of erosion, sediment transport, ... Full description.

This portal provides access to information on United States Geological Survey (USGS) research activities conducted in support of the U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program (CCSP). This research includes carbon sequestration in sediments, landscape dynamics and vegetation change, fate of carbon in cold region forests, exchanges of greenhouse gases, water vapor, and heat at the Earth's surface, and other ... Full description.

This article presents a technique, Cross-Disciplinary Peer Education (CDPE), which allows forestry students to teach student peers from other disciplines about basic forestry principles. CDPE is an innovative way to give natural resource and agriculture students (peer educators) the opportunity to educate students from other disciplines (peer learners). The authors found that by using this technique, ... Full description.

Zooming down to Bolivia, showing a time-lapse sequence of Landsat images from 1984 to 1998 Full description.