This is a temporary website, mostly to contain the content for a final website, which is under construcation (and will take some time).  Meanwhile, this content might be helpful to teachers, other educators, and anyone else interested in the video series.

Support Pages Carbon Cycle Cool Tools 1 Cool Tools 2 Crowns, Trunks, and Roots Fall Colors Forest History Forestry Careers Jack Pine Logging Products Photosythesis & Respiration Tree Growth Tree Identification Tree Regeneration Vernal Pools Wildlife Habitat Wood-using Mills How to Make Paper How to Make Lumber How to Make Veneer How to Make OSB Future Products Credits & Partners And on and on . . .    -----------------------------------------

Episode Transcripts Carbon Cycle Cool Tools Crowns, Trunks, and Roots Fall Colors Forest History Forestry Careers Jack Pine Logging Products Photosynthesis & Respiration Tree Growth Tree Identification #1 Tree Regeneration Vernal Pools Wildlife Habitat Wood-using Mills How to Make Paper How to Make Lumber How to Make Veneer How to Make OSB Future Products

 

   The high-altitude idea for these videos is to raise awareness of the critical roles that forests play in the upper Great Lakes States.  Forests provide a myriad of ecological, economic, and socio-cultural benefits.  Management of these critical resources produces higher quality and more abundant sets of these products and services. 

   More specifically, the purpose for these videos is to INTRODUCE a few concepts for each episode topic.  They are meant to be light-hearted and entertaining.  Yet, the intention is to have both feet on solid science ground (biological, economic, social, et al.).  We acknowledge that many of the topics are introduced or reinforced in school curricula at the fourth through seventh grades.  So, these students, and their teachers, are the primary target audience.  All of these topics can be more fully explored within the classroom setting or, in some case, be explored IN THE WOODS!  With this in mind, these support pages are embedded into the Michigan Forests Forever website, which already houses a wide range of information about Michigan forests, designed for use by teachers.

   This entire project cost will be over $100,000.  No small amount, of course.  The primary authors were Bill Cook, Georgia Peterson, and James Ford.  Additionally, most of the episode scripts were either drafted and/or reviewed by cooperating foresters, biologists, teachers, and other experts.  Michigan State University Extension contributed over half the expense in the form of time and travel for Bill and Georgia.  No doubt, our friend and highly-skilled videographer, James Ford, also volunteered many hours beyond those for which he was paid.  The project was fortunate to have financial support from a variety of forest-related organizations.  Each of these organizations value education, outreach, and the marvelously important role that teachers play in our society.  We all hope that these videos will help teachers teach and, perhaps, spark some interest among students about the natural world and how we must manage forests in order to survive and thrive.  

If you're curious about who produced these videos, please visit the "credits" page.

For another set of great forestry shorts, see the ForestInfo.org series.

This project was supported by many partners among the forestry community.  It has been a truly collaborative effort and we thank all who have contributed to this effort.

Back to the Michigan Forests Forever Table of Contents!