In order to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of Colegio Bolivar the agricultural plant science students are going to undertake an inventory exercise of the college campus. It is hoped that this will be the first step in determining the carbon footprint of the campus, by determining the amount of carbon that is currently stored and sequestered each year by the schools plants.
To help students visualize how they are going to identify trees, record and save data, and how they intend to use their results Dr Luz Amalia Forerro of Universidad de Tolima forestry department and Andres Sierra, a CB parent and forest engineer were invited to the school to teach my agric students some basic tree inventory basics on Saturday the 22nd October 2022.
This involved a short interactive lecture by Dr Forerro about the basics of measuring trees, and then a practical session led by both Dr Forerro and Andres Sierra in how to measure the height of trees, using three different methods, and the diameter at breast height (dbh) of trees using a special type of tape measure.
The session was a great success and got students thinking about carbon sequestration and how to measure carbon content using measurements of trees.