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Restoring Tropical Forests: Implementing a module in an undergraduate majors’ course in forest ecology in Costa Rica

Author(s): Branko Hilje

Technological Institute of Costa Rica and Organization for Tropical Studies

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Summary:
This publication describes implementation of a module on tropical forest restoration in Costa Rica for an upper-level undergraduate course in forest ecology at the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, using the module in both the lab and field.

Licensed under CC Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International according to these terms

Version 1.0 - published on 17 May 2023 doi:10.25334/VQ6B-6D04 - cite this Last public release: 2.0

Keywords

  1. forest ecology
  2. Restoration
  3. field course

Alignments

  1. Resource Type
  2. Courses
  3. Course Level
  4. Class Type
  5. Class Size
  6. Audience
  7. Lesson Length
Contents:
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Description

Overview of Module:  

The module offers a background on global forest restoration initiatives, as well as obstacles to tropical forest recovery, and common strategies to facilitate forest recovery. Through a case study from Costa Rica, students learn about the ecological and social barriers to tropical forest recovery and compare the ecological and social outcomes of applied nucleation with other forest restoration strategies. The module also highlights the importance of replicating restoration studies or projects at multiple sites.

Summary of Implementation Plan and Teaching Notes:  

The class in which we used the module was a computer lab where the students read the material, watched the video, and answered the questions related to the module. I was present while they did this, to help them understand concepts or sections where they had questions. This gave me the opportunity to encourage the students and to track their advance, giving feedback and support when needed. We also had a brainstorming session before and during the module implementation. Based on my recent experience teaching, the students need supervision to achieve goals. At the end of the class, we had a wrap-up session where we all discussed the answers and finished with a take-home message. The classroom activities with this module were integrated during a field trip to a tropical lowland wet forest and different types of surrounding land uses such as banana and pineapple plantations, urban areas, and pasturelands for cattle.

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