Forest Community (2 Hours)

Students will learn the concept of ground cover, understory and canopy to determine the health and history of the forest. The relationship between plant and animal life of the forest will also be examined. The maximum number of  classes is three.

Upon arrival to the preserve, groups will be formed and oriented in the parking lot.  Students will then proceed and rotate through three forest communities, coniferous, deciduous and shrub/swamp. At each study site students will learn to distinguish the various layers of the forest and identify the dominant species that prevail in each community. The composition of the underlying soil and its relation to the plant species it supports will be investigated by taking core samples using soil probes. By sifting through the leaf litter, students will see the transformation of forest debris into soil by fungus, bacteria and soil invertebrates. The overall age of a forest stand and the life history of a tree will be discovered by counting the annular rings. An increment borer, a type of drill, which extracts a small core sample of wood from a tree, will be used with the assistance of the students to help age a dominant tree in each forest stand. An investigation of plant materials, wood, bark, leaves, nuts and seeds available as food sources will help students predict the types of animals that would call each forest type home. Rotation for one group will be coniferous, shrub/swamp, deciduous, rotation for a second group will be deciduous, coniferous, shrub/swamp, rotation for a third group will be, shrub/swamp, deciduous, coniferous.