COTR Environmental Science Program

Randy Harris, a member of the CCFS Board had a brief walk and talk with Professor Andrena Heigh and 18 students from the College of the Rockies  Environmental Science program. We entered  the Community Forest discussed fire ecology, forest ingrowth, healthy ecosystems and the recent thinning of the forest near the college. The students were left with a field lab experiment based on the Community Forest tree growth. They were given 17 tree cookies (narrow segments of tree bole) from the thinned stand and told to measure and compare the growth in spaced and unspaced forest. The question to be answered is “does thinning a forest lead to improved tree growth in a Dry Douglas-fir forest?”