The GPS signal bounced from earth to space to earth in a matter
of seconds. And when enough satellites lined up the coordinates,
David Berle had pinpointed another tree to add to his inventory.
The horticulture professor with the UGA College of Agricultural
and Environmental Sciences spent a May term teaching his students
how to hunt trees and add them to a geographic information
systems database. And although it was a class project, the
study also helped local foresters.
“We mapped trees that already have significance,” Berle
said. “The county had all the trees inventoried, but
didn’t have a good map of them.”
The yellow hand-held global positioning systems that his class
uses are accurate within one meter. The funds to purchase the
devices – which cost $5,000 each – came from a
UGA Learning Technologies Grant.
“It helps sometimes when you’re teaching to have
something that looks like a Game Boy,” he said in reference
to the GPS. “One of our long-term goals is to go online
with this information,” much like a person can go online,
map out road directions and, now, view the area’s geography. “It’s
a lot of ‘wow, gee whiz’ practical stuff.”
It’s practical because mapping trees is not just about
building inventory. Realtors, planning committees and other
organizations throughout the state compare this information,
such as an area’s tree canopy, to the property value
of a home. Having that information readily available, and giving
significant trees “a unique point on the map,” would
speed up the process. Mapping landmark trees also helps contractors
know which trees to protect when they are developing land for
residential or commercial purposes, Berle said.
The class of eight students didn’t spend the three-week
term mapping every single tree in the county. Instead, they
hunted champion trees, historic trees and trees that have cultural
significance.
A champion tree is the “largest tree of a particular
species … it helps citizens in the county to keep looking
for the next big tree,” Berle said. Trees with historical
significance include those in a former slave cemetery that
started in an open field and over the centuries turned into
a dense forest. Culturally significant trees include the Moon
Tree, a pine tree whose seed was taken on an Apollo mission.
Building the New Learning Environment
The new learning environment is an academic and intellectual
community on the campus of the University of Georgia humming
with the vibrancy of the true college experience—bright
and talented students working with brilliant faculty formally
in the classroom and informally over a cup of coffee or lounging
in the greenspace which stretches from one end of campus to
the other. It is a place which recognizes that new information
technologies are transforming traditional academic disciplines
and embraces those opportunities. |
