New Professor Lecture Series 2010-2011 (Extra Credit #2)

Proffesor James M. Dyer's presentation on Wednesday, March 9th was a rare environmental presentation with an almost positive tone.

This "positive tone" which was what caught my attention the most in the entire presentation, spoke of regenerating forests. What was fasinating about the regeneration of forest around southern Ohio, were much of the presentation was concentrated, was the idea of succession. The forests were regenerating after years of destruction, peaking in 1920; which is a good thing. However, the forests are not regenerating to their original state of makeup. We are now experiencing an Oak-to-Maple transition period.

Due to certain environmental changes, Maples are now becoming the dominant tree in southern Ohio and other near by Appalachian regions, where as Oaks used to be #1. Prof. Dyer presented a few possibilities to this phenomenon. The possibility I found most interesting was the lack of Native American burnings, that is, Natives purposely setting fire to the forest to make for better hunting lands. This theory was then proven unlikely to the Oak-to-Maple transition, however, I enjoyed the creative fleshing out of possibilities used to determine the nature of an environmental effect such as this.

Being a geographer by trade, Prof. Dyer had a good number of maps as visuals. However, these visuals were very helpful and informative to his presentation. They very much supported his ideas and claims and seemed to provide further credibility to the presentation and further understanding to the audience. My personal favorite visual was a .gif file that showed the evolution of tree growth from 1920 to modern day. It was reassuring to see the map of Ohio gradually growing darker with tree coverage throughout the years.

Overall, I very much enjoyed Prof. Dyer's presentation. It was very informative and easy to understand, which is more than can be said about many presentation put on by professors I have seen. I hope this presentation will have worked as a kind of primer to my "American Forests" class I am taking Spring quarter; with any hope I can whip out a term like 'Oak-to-Maple transition' and look like a genius.