Lesson 5: Forest Health

Objective

1. To understand how overcrowding makes trees vulnerable to insects, disease, and wildfires
2. To understand that enlightened management using sustained forestry, controlled burns, and thinning provides forest health and ensures that California will never grow out of trees

Skills

1. Critical Reasoning
2. Forestry
3. Ecology
4. Association

Vocabulary

Wild fire

A fire that is burning out of control and unpredictably

Habitat

The place that is home to a plant or animal

Conifer

A cone-bearing evergreen tree

By-product

Something that is made in the process of making something else

Cambium

Clusters of tree cells that produce new layers of bark each year forming the tree rings that we can count to tell the age of a tree

Natural regeneration

The process by which seeds sprout to produce seedlings in the wild, without the use of a nursery to cultivate them

Focus

1. Establish the concept of competition as an element of all forms of life by asking the students to guess what happens if a tree has too many fruits on it.

• Many of them will be weak and small.
• They are more likely to be attacked by insects and diseases.
• Many will fall from the trees before they ripen.

2. Establish the concept of the forest as a large garden. Gardens that are healthy, beautiful, and productive need to have plenty of water, fertile soil, protection against insects and diseases, and thinning of overcrowded plants. If they remain overcrowed, there is too much competition for nutritient, water, and sunlight. They soon become stressed and vulnerable. Thinnings in the garden can be used as food or as fertilizer in a compost pile. Thinnings in the forest are harvested trees used for forest products or to produce energy in cogeneration plants.

3. Establish the concept of sustainable forestry by asking the students to figure out a plan by which they can keep picking flowers from their garden all year.

They can replant new flowers as others are being harvested.

4. Establish the concept of checks and balances in nature by asking the students to come up with ways in which the forest is kept from being overcrowded and becoming weak and unhealthy.

Insects, diseases, natural and controlled fires, and thinning help keep a natrual balance in the forest.

5. Use the Forest Facts Discussion Themes to reinforce key forestry concepts before students initiate the other activity sheets.

Enrichment Activity

1. Have students decode the message to discover the three basic Enemies of the Forest.

2. Have students work The Puzzle Box to find out why California will never grow out of trees.

3. Have the students decrypt A Forest Puzzle to find out what two procedures can help maintain forest health.

Other Materials Needed:

Student Vocabulary List

Forest Facts Handout

Enemies of the Forest

Forest Puzzle Handout

Puzzle Box Handout

Forest Facts Answer Key

Enemies Answer Key

Forest Puzzle Answers

Puzzle Box Answer