For most Oregon students, a career in forestry seems out of reach—if they’ve ever heard of it. Now a new tool is opening up the world of forestry to be more accessible and fun.
The tool, called Forest Planner, was created by Ecotrust and is now in use in several classrooms around Oregon. As the web tool is refined and expanded, Ecotrust hopes to roll it out broadly to high schools and community colleges around the state. The goal is not only to open up career options, but also open students’ eyes to caring for Northwest forests into the future.
“Forest literacy is really about being able to think critically about how we manage forests,” says David Diaz, Ecotrust’s Director of Forestry Technology & Analytics. He says the next generation of foresters must be able to look at a forest through the lens of the whole ecosystem rather than just the money it can generate—but the possible scenarios quickly get complex. Forest Planner helps students visualize these management scenarios and use data to calculate the tradeoffs between, for example, wildfire management and timber revenue.
“We need to train foresters that are not just able to calculate timber very well, but to say ‘what is this going to do for salmon, and how does this relate to carbon storage?’ ” he says.
With support from the Gray Family Foundation, Ecotrust has worked to cater Forest Planner to the education space, developing lesson plans that address teachers’ needs while helping meet Next Generation Science Standards.
While some classrooms have access to a nearby forest where they can measure trees and enter data into the system, that is not required. Forest Planner helps students model what the forest would look like if they were there, even if they don’t have the resources for a field trip.
“It’s been really inspiring to see how the teachers have been inspired,” David says.