Posted by permission of The Oconee Enterprise, Watkinsville, GA USA. Copyright 2001 The Oconee Enterprise.

Students learn about the Earth's Global Forests BY Travis M. Chaffin 22 February 2001 The Oconee EnterPrise

Dr. Reese Halter is a busy man. On Monday and Tuesday of this week, he met with students of Malcolm Bridge Middle School as part of a tour of each of the 14 middle schools worldwide helping conduct a long term experiment studying global weather trends.

"It was my baby," he said of Global Forest, the conservation biological charity he helped start 26 months ago. "I conceived it in the mid-1980s when I was a forestry student, and I put it in my back pocket until I got my Ph.D."

After meeting with the kidsat Malcolm Bridge, it was off to Toronto, Ontario, where Halter is scheduled to address another group of students today and tomorrow.

The experiment is now in six months into the 10-year project, and Halter said it could last even longer.

A state-of-the-art weather station installed on the school's roof last year collects the information that will help the scientists in charge base their findings.

The data feeds automatically into the students' computer onece a week. It is then their job to compile it, and update the info on the project's website.

"The whole impetus is to try and reach kids when nature is still cool," Halter said."In grade eight, the birds and the bees and the hormones are starting to kick in."

And the kids have responded with enthusiasm.

"They understand that they are providing that information to an older person and scientist. "Cool, we have a big responsibility," he said of the student feedback.

Global Forest boasts 100 scientists affiliated with 32 international universities working on more than 50 ongoing projects spanning three continents and six countries.

"They are conservation biologists explaining the wonders of the forest," Halter said, "by funding scientific studies study new life and short-circuit ecological disaster."

Halter talked about his visit to a school in an impoverished neighbourhood in West Dallas, where the project had a profound impact on one seventh grade boy.

"He said,'You know what I'm going to do? I'm gonna get that Nobel Prize in Physics' And that's awesome," Halter said. "There is someone who has set the bar way high. And I just said 'You betcha you're going to get it. Just keep ondigging.'"

Halter said the kidsa are fascinated by natuyre and learning about exciting new things. And while the kids are doing a lot of the work inside keeping the website current, he said the ultimate goal is getting the kids excited about nature.

"Get back outside," he said. "Get to the natural world."

One exciting detail of the program is that all the students can keep up with each other over the website, thus making environmentally-conscious friends across the world.

Schools from as far away as England and Australia are involved in the project.

A group of students using the same technology available at Malcolm Bridge Middle School were actually able to help the California Forestry Service figure out why a control burn blew off course.

The students discovered that every day at a certain time, the wind changed its course.

"The forest service didn't know that," he says. "[The forestry service] claimed they did, but they didn't."

It's a testament to the youth's quest for knowledge and the availability of the technologyto give them that hands-on ability.

"You know kids are just switched on," Halter said, "and given the right positive environment, they can do a lot."

Halter said his group is trying to increase the middle school students' interest in the subject, and then let them make up their own minds about how best to deal with the situation.

"We're not in any way, shape or form looking to be advocates," he said. "We're just trying to get the kids to think about nature and trees. So it's really cool."