By Kelly Meyerhofer
A dozen students in Julie Hahm's advanced placement environmental science class are out in the woods, measuring the circumference of trees and identifying their species.
It's a brisk November morning, and the Greendale High School sophomores and juniors are learning how to calculate the age of a tree without chopping it down and counting rings. By knowing the age of a sample of trees, they can calculate how much carbon dioxide the plants take in and how much oxygen is released. Hahm will help students map and extrapolate their findings to represent the entire forest.
The lesson is part of a yearlong effort to calculate the carbon footprint of the school district. Next year's goal is even more ambitious: finding ways to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
Wisconsin's school forest program, called LEAF, is the result of a partnership between the state Department of Natural Resources Forestry Division and the Wisconsin Center for Environmental Education at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. The DNR primarily finances LEAF; Gretchen Marshall of UW-Stevens Point leads it. Under the program, school forests are owned or controlled by a public or private school and used for environmental education and natural resource management.
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