Middle school and high school
Approximately 2 class periods:
Forest managers take many factors into consideration when making decisions. In recent decades, some of those decisions have been founded in creating sustainable forests for future generations. Your students will learn how the criteria selected by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization helped them determine the health and sustainability of the world’s forests.
[Note: read the previous blog posts in this series to learn about the world’s forests, biodiversity, the economic and social benefits they provide, and their role in the global carbon cycle.]
The fifth inquiry, on pages 37 to 41, asks “How well are we managing our forests worldwide?” The text is accompanied by several charts. The lesson plan for this inquiry, starting on page 56, will help you lead your students through deciphering the complex information in the charts and text.
One of GLOBE’s strengths is its long-term global data set. Educators, students, and citizen scientists began using GLOBE protocols in 1995. There are now nearly 30 years of data available to the public. The benefit of having data collected over a long period of time is being able to look for trends that will help us make decisions about the world around us.
In honor of this long-term data, the GLOBE Program initiated the 30 Years of GLOBE Campaign: Comparing GLOBE Data Past and Present. GLOBE is encouraging students to study the environmental changes emerging in their local ecosystems by collecting and analyzing environmental data using GLOBE protocols and exploring data in GLOBE databases, and making comparisons between past and current data.
If you have completed the previous four activities in this blog series, your students will have several current data points to analyze. They can search for historic data in the GLOBE database to compare it with their own data. While they may not find data in your immediate vicinity, chances are they can find data from your state or region.
The GLOBE databases can be accessed in two ways: the Data Visualization System allows users to view, graph, and export data on a map-based interface, and the Advanced Data Access Tool provides filters to refine a search of a protocol by many parameters.
Each of these tools is powerful; it may take you some time to become familiar with them. There are several (very helpful) Data Access, Analysis and Reporting Tutorials available that I highly suggest you watch (and re-watch, as necessary!).
Congratulations! You’ve completed all five portions of The World’s Forests 2 in cooperation with GLOBE resources. Your students have a better understanding now of the vital role forests play in the global environment. If they have collected data, your students are also beginning to learn about their local ecosystem. Now it’s time to consider submitting your student research and reports to GLOBE’s International Virtual Science Symposium (IVSS) or attend a regional Student Research Symposium (SRS).
An important aspect of science is communicating ideas. Scientists receive feedback from their peers and must learn to explain their findings to the general public. To help your students in the process of communicating their research -- either through the IVSS, SRS, or a local science fair -- visit GLOBE’s Steps in the Scientific Process webpage.
Acknowledgement: This material is based upon work supported by USDA Forest Service Eastern Region (Agreement no. 20-PA-11090100-026). Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USDA Forest Service.
This blog post is part of the GLOBE and the Natural Inquirer Crosswalk Project . Other blog posts are available on the U.S. GLOBE Teacher Resources page .
Natural Inquirer issues can be downloaded, and classroom sets of many issues can be ordered from their website. Find the complete list of issues available and instructions for ordering on the Natural Inquirer website .
