A new class that recently started at Pueblo Community College’s campus in Mancos centers on the basics of forestry and equips students with technical field skills, too.
“There’s a demand for foresters and forestry work,” said Laurel Smerch, the instructor that teaches the class. “Ideally, this transfers into job skills.”
On Tuesday and Thursday mornings, class convenes in Room 101, where students learn about forest biomes and ecosystems, and why they are the way they are, said Smerch.
In the afternoon, class goes into the field.
So far, just two students have signed up. And on a warm, sunny Thursday afternoon, Smerch and the students made their way to presaved coordinates in the forest a short walk from campus.
They were using Avenza Maps to find the spot, one of many tools students will learn to use, said Smerch.
That day, they were peering through different prisms to try and gauge how many trees were in a given area, or plot, which Smerch explained could be either fixed or variable.
Though “fixed is a little easier to conceptualize,” the plot was variable that day, which is good for things like timber sales, said Smerch.
They held the rectangular piece of glass – the prism – above a specific point called the plot center, which was marked with a small blue flag in the ground.
When peering through the prism, light refracts and cuts trees in different ways that either makes them “count” or not.
Once they turned 360 degrees with the prism in hand, hovering above plot center, the students took turns measuring the diameter and height of trees that “counted.”
“I would always eyeball it in past,” said Christina Martinez, a student in the class, as she peered through a clinometer to measure the height of a tree up ahead.
Martinez owns Rocky Mountain Tree Co. and thus works in forestry. She said she’s in class to learn more about the industry, it’s jargon and “the right way of doing things.”
“I work with the Forest Service all the time,” Martinez said. “I want to learn the language and processes of forestry.”
Once Martinez measured the tree’s height, a student named Jonathan McDonald measured its diameter.
As he wrapped DBH tape around the trunk, he told The Journal about his background in construction, and how this class piqued his interest because he’s always “liked forestry and tree identification.”
Specifically, McDonald said he’s interested in the practical skills side of forestry – like measuring the juniper tree’s diameter.
“Southwest Colorado is a cool place to learn about and study forest ecology,” said Smerch, as she jotted down measurements on her clipboard.
The college is surrounded by piñon-juniper, she explained, but “20 miles from here as the crow flies is Box Canyon, and it’s an aspen and spruce forest.”
Smerch marveled at the stark variation in forest and habitat types in our area, thanks to things like elevation, soil types and rainfall.
“Forestry is all about what do we want to get out of our relationship with the forest,” whether it be recreation, timber, prescribed burning, or wildlife, to name a few things that Smerch mentioned.
“People interact with forests no matter what,” said Smerch.
If you’re interested in learning more about the class or enrolling, email Laurel Smerch at Laurel.Smerch@pueblocc.edu.
