Geographical fieldwork in forests
Fieldwork in forest areas
In the Czech Republic school excursions are commonly heading into forested areas.
The excursion field work program routinely deals with forest canopy cognition, usually its living segment. Pupils are being taught to recognise individual tree species, parts of tree bodies, their flowers and fruits. The pupils are learning about the relationships of forests and trees with animals. Pupils learn to identify individual forest herbs (Barányová, Novák, 2004). The specialized ecological education makes pupils familiar with forest ecosystems as a whole, their structures and dynamics, relationships between their compounds, their roles and functions. The spatial aspects of the forest – its territorial differentiation – remains only marginal. Geography studies presents an opportunity to explore and explain such spatial aspects of nature and in this way will help its understanding.
Geographer´s view on the forest
Woodland plays many important roles in the European cultural landscape. Wood production was the original forest function for humans. The present understanding of forest functions is quite different beacause of deep changes in the production tech-nologies in industry, housing, construction, heating, etc. as well as better knowledge about other important abilities of woodland. Other forest functions include:
• protecting the soil against soil erosion,
• climatic influences like air humidification, cooling and wind speed reduction,
• hygienic functions such as dust absorbtion, noise reduction
• aesthetic aspects like the psychological role of green colour and diverse horizon
• recreational and health features where the input of chemicals has a positive effect
• ecological aspects where biodiversity protection of species and societies
• water protection supporting water accumulation and filtration
• educational through teaching in and about forests and
• scientific issues with a study of various aspects of forest ecosystems.
Many of these functions are hidden not only from the broad public but also to educa-tion and research specialists as well. Developing opportunities that will increase the awareness of the importance of and opportunities to understand forested area is thus very important.
Role of an integrated terrain education centre
The problem of forest teaching lies in the question of how to explain the importance and significance of forests to pupils in primary schools. Field and class education offers opportunities to involve pupils in the subject. If the objective is to encourage active pupil participation it is important to apply attractive educational methods in a series of stages of forest study. These stages can be represented by the collection of data about forest functions (in field, literature, maps, aerial and satellite imagery) and data processing and presentation of results to other schoolmates. The most attrac-tive teaching approaches can best be achieved in the field and in computer-assisted classes. The establishment of an “integrated terrain education centre“ can be used successfully for both these purposes.
One of these field study laboratories belongs to the Department of Geography, Faculty of Education, Masaryk University in Brno. It is located nearby the Jedovnice village in the beautifull landscape on the border of Moravian Karst and Drahanská vrchovina Highland about 35 km to the North from the city Brno centre.
The purpose of the integrated terrain education centre is to integrate various field study practices carried out by individual science branches. The environmental education and professional preparation of future teachers (presently students of the Faculty of Education) were the linking forces between natural science (namely geography, biology and chemistry) and humanistic science (represented by citizen education) (Hofmann, Rychnovský and Plucková, 2003). The centre thus serves as a terrain school for one-week pupil field courses for primary schools in Czech Republic, and partially also for the Slovak Republic during the summer season (May, June, September).
Various progressive teaching methods are being applied here groupwork, project and problem solving education. The instruction emphasises the co-operation of all participants (teachers, students and pupils) to solve practical tasks. The inter-subject links play a very important role in improving the importance of teacher co-operation and the application of team-based education. The outdoor education is comparable to the types of “fieldwork“ which are commonly undertaken in English/American schools.
Fieldwork is understood as a complex educational form consisting of progressive teaching methods, such as experiments, centre research, short-term and long-term observations, project solving, co-operative methods, experiential methods, etc.. It consists of various organisational education forms (including jaunts, field experi-ments, excursions, thematic school visits, expeditions, etc.. The focus of this kind of education is based on outdoor activities – outside the school area and out-of doors.
These activities support the development of necessary lifelong skills of pupils.
The integrated terrain education centre has an accomodation facility, research laboratory, library and depot. The classroom and laboratory do not simulate the normal school environment. The distribution of mobile furniture and other equip-ment depends on the requireequip-ments of the visiting school. There are microscopes, stereo lenses, chemical laboratory, GPS instruments, TV sets, video recorders, thematic maps, etc. at their disposal here.
Geographical fieldwork in the forest about the forest
There is a varied local geographical environment around the integrated terrain educa-tion centre in Jedovnice (village, pastures and meadows, fish ponds, forests in hilly karstic and non karstic areas with an elevation between 450 and 550 m a.s.l.). This makes the study of various aspects of the territorial distribution and functionality of the forest area possible (Figure 1).
The fieldwork for pupils (grade 5 of the primary school and above) usually consists of (Kolejka, 2005):
1. Forest functionality mapping (topographic map at the scale of 1:10000 is available, orthophotomap at same scale as well, community master plan, black-and-white base
maps for colour childrens´mapping of forests with various features).
The children can be inspired with the above mentioned overview of forest functions. They can identify forest areas with specific functions in maps, in the field and/or in areial imagery by themselves (such as wood productional forest – connif-erous woodland without any other function, soil protectional forest – on steep slopes, water protec-tional forest – along the banks of water bodies, streams and springs, protected forest – in preserved areas of all classes, ecologically important forest – predominantly decidous forest with nature near canopy species composi-tion visible in orthophoto), recreacomposi-tional forest – with dense network of walking routes, pick-nick areas, small architecture, watch points, hienical forest – bordering production facilities and busy roads, educational forest – equipped with learning pathes and tables, aesthetic forest – hidening various „cicatrices“ in the land-scape (fresh minning areas) or improving views on important landmarks (castles, mansions, etc.), climatical forest – protecting housing areas and dividing large agricultural segments of open landscape. This way, children can realize that the most of forest areas are multifunctional (Figure 2).
2. Consequent discussion about fitness of territorial distribution of forests with identified functions. Children can assess if the present functions of multifunc-tional forest areas are complementary or competitive. They can identify priority functions governing individual forest areas eighter excluding other functions or supporting them. Such supervised discussion teaches children to understand the forest in functional and spatial relationships, in any case from the viewpoint forest utility for humans. The respect to the forest can be being developed this way better than by demostration its features.
3. Jaunt into functional forest samples is used to demonstrate the best behavioural practices. This way, children can understand what type of behavior is harmful to the forest and its functioning, and which are not.
4. A team competition can be arranged based on different types of forest activity in diverse areas. These can include searches, inumerical and/or word games.
Potential field work teachers in the forest
Trainee geography teachers and those of biology or ecology can gain valuable pedagogical experience by working in the field centre. They need to be supervised by experienced expert teachers and be aware of the safety and other issues associ-ated with outdoor education. It is essential for them to prepae and undertake “forest Figure 1. Digital map of present landscape compilled by
geog-raphy students and pupils
learning“, to develop and then introduce essential teaching materials, to raise issues with qualified teaching staff and experi-ence and learn key principles of fieldwork organisation. Using the laboraty processing equipment is another positive aspect, this includes personal computers with GIS software. It is evident that GIS technology represents a very effictive teaching tool, as forest field work linked with GIS is a very attractive alliance opening new horizons to the geography teaching (Mahel and Svatoňová, 2003).
References
1. BARÁNYOVÁ S., NOVÁK S. 2004. Zeměpisné učivo ve výuce vlastivědy a přírodovědy.
Biologie, Chemie, Zeměpis, Vol. 13, № 4, pp. 199−204.
2. HOFMANN E., RYCHNOVSKÝ B., PLUCKOVÁ I. 2003. Terénní výuka a její real-izace na Integrovaném odborném pracovišti PdF MU. In: Pregraduální příprava a post-graduální vzdělávání učitelů chemie. Ostravská univerzita, Ostrava, pp. 252−256.
3. KOLEJKA J. 2005. Geografie a les. Námět pro terénní výuku pro základní školy.
Biologie, Chemie, Zeměpis, Vol. 14, № 3, pp. 145−149.
4. MAHEL D., SVATOŇOVÁ, H. 2003. Terénní projektová výuka a GIS ve výuce středních škol. ArcRevue, № 3, pp. 15−18.
Figure 2. Example of results of the forest mapping done by field work