Second Post

This is the second blog and the last one before I leave for my expedition. As we learned in class today from reading over the research overview, billions of people rely on trees and forests for shelter, fuel, medicines, stable soils, clean air and fresh water. It is vital that we protect our biodiversity because there are many resources in these forests that may have applications that are yet to be discovered. From the questions that I have been receiving from the students, I am excited to see that the students are thinking of questions that not only relate to the study that I will be doing, but also starting to think about solutions to these problems that we face. Beacuse of the large number of questions, I won't be able to answer all of them, but hopefully by communicating through this blog, I will be able to answer most of your questions. During this study, I will be in the Chesapeake Bay area to study the forest response to climate change. I will be working with some of the foremost forest scientists and institutions in the world at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute to understand these forest processes. We will be researching the climate, tree response and animal responses using several different methods that we will be discussing in class before I leave. Since some of you had such good questions, I will leave you tonight with questions to answer from some of your fellow classmates:
1. How do scientists project future climate and how reliable are these predictions. (Thanks for the question Mhary)
2. Why is observing the forest important? (Thanks for the question Alex)
3. What exactly would happen if there were no forests in the world? (Thanks for the question Melvin)

And thanks for all of the good questions that many of you have been coming up with. Please make sure to follow along in my blog while I am away in Maryland. Enjoy. - Mr. Lewandowski