Teaching in Contemporary Forest Resources Curricula: Applications to Courses in Forest Measurements and Biometrics

摘要

Foresters face new and evolving challenges as society reconsiders the balance of its interests between wood production and the provision of ecosystem services in the management of forests. Whatever paths this process may take, sound and broad-based decisions will continue to require accurate and relevant measurements of current forest conditions and projections of future conditions under alternative management programs. Forest measurements and biometrics (FMB) will remain a key component of future forest management and a critical element in the education of future forest managers. As professors who both teach and do research in FMB, we offer teaching goals that we believe will improve FMB education in forestry schools to meet future needs. In this article, we outline teaching goals for university-level instruction in forest resources curricula and the roles of FMB in modern forestry. We then identify what we feel are the most critical challenges in teaching and learning FMB and discuss selected strategies to meet teaching objectives for FMB. A fourth section presents an overview of how selected strategies can be integrated into FMB classes, including examples and comments on the role that new technology might play in meeting the aforementioned challenges. The final section summarizes our main points and provides conduding remarks.