College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science

Tag: sustainability

Forestry Club Tree-dition Plants Seeds for a Merry and Bright Future

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Two forestry club members pose carrying a massive tree through the snowy woods.
Michigan Tech’s Forestry Club harvested 86 trees for their annual Christmas Tree sale from two Tech owned properties. All photos courtesy of club secretary Tristan Walk.

Michigan Tech’s Society of American Foresters Forestry Club’s annual tree sale is a long-standing tradition at Michigan Tech. Forestry Club secretary and forestry major Tristan Walk ’26 said the written record of the sale dates to the early 1980s, while the anecdotal record places the start of the tradition somewhere in the 1960s or 1970s. Club paperwork shows trees were bought wholesale from tree farms south of Chassell and in Iron River in the 1990s through the 2000s, although neither company offers bulk wholesale these days.

In recent years, the club has supplied their sale with wild-cut trees from Michigan Tech’s Wilkinson Tract. Students drive out into the woods and fan out on foot, assessing the types of trees they are looking for based on what is available in the area and what is best for the forest. Club members usually cut six- to eight-foot conifers as well as small “Charlie Brown” sapling trees, taking care to thin the area but not decimate the conifer population. They also seek out one larger 15- to 20-foot tree for the U. J. Noblet Forest Resources Building Atrium.

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MTU College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science Welcomes New Faculty

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Hallway in the UJ Noblet Building with carvings in the wood walls and animal specimens.
The College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science is continually growing. This academic year brings new faculty experts in ecology, hydrology, natural resource management, and digital image processing. The college also celebrates new leadership and faculty appointments.

The College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science welcomed two new faculty members and celebrated our faculty moving into new positions in the college this year.

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Steer Your Students to this Opportunity for Collaboration

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Research Assistant Professor Sara Robinson
Research Assistant Professor Sara Robinson

Research Assistant Professor Sara Robinson is crafting a pilot course with a decidedly interdisciplinary focus–for students of all backgrounds and majors, including engineers, scientists, chemists, artists, wood enthusiasts and writers.

“Wood in the Modern Age” will be offered beginning in fall 2012 semester. It is intended to develop a fundamental understanding of the properties, characteristics, and role of wood in today’s society–along with its importance in sustainable building.

The course will focus on wood as a biological material and expore its relationship to art, architecture, engineering and science. It is for both undergraduate and graduate students; class sessions will be in the evening.

The course work will culminate with a design project in which the knowledge gained–combined with the unique background of each student–will be applied to a final project. Class instruction will combine lecture, laboratory and studio time, as well as situational learning experiences.

This offering, which also will be open to students at Finlandia University, adds to the more than 100 classes at Tech that have a sustainability component. Robinson says it is a good fit for a world that is increasingly complex and interdependent.

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Sustainability: Will We Recognize It When We See It?

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eco-friendlyJuly 1, 2010—By Jennifer Donovan

Most people today embrace sustainability as a good thing, and it may be the greatest technological challenge our society has ever faced.

But, in a paper just published in the journal BioScience, Michigan Technological University wildlife ecologist John A. Vucetich and Michigan State University environmental ethicist Michael Nelson say that the technological challenge of sustainability pales in comparison to the ethical crisis it presents to society. 

In a paper titled “Sustainability: Virtuous or Vulgar?” Vucetich and Nelson examine the most widely-accepted definitions of sustainability, which indicate at least roughly that sustainability is: meeting human needs in a socially-just manner without depriving ecosystems of their health.  While the definition sounds quite specific, it could mean anything from “exploit as much as desired without infringing on the future ability to exploit as much as desired” to “exploit as little as necessary to maintain a meaningful life,” the scientist and ethicist say.

“From a single definition arise two wildly disparate views of a sustainable world,” says Vucetich, who teaches in Michigan Tech’s School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science and leads a long-running study of the wolves and moose of Isle Royale National Park. “Handling these disparate views is the inescapable ethical crisis of sustainability.”

“The crisis results from not knowing what we mean by value-laden terms like ‘ecosystem health’ and ‘human needs.’” Nelson says, “In other words, is ecosystem health defined only by its ability to meet human needs, or does ecosystem health define the limits of human need?”

Solving the dilemma boils down to knowing the extent to which sustainability is motivated by concern for nature.  Or as Vucetich puts it: “Are we concerned for nature because nature is intrinsically valuable, or only because of what nature can do for us?”

Nelson adds, “These questions are as difficult to answer as it is necessary to answer them.  We are unlikely to achieve sustainability without knowing what it means.” 

More disturbingly, Vucetich and Nelson point out that almost no effort is spent trying to answer this question.  For example, universities have hired dozens of academics in recent years to solve sustainability problems.  None of these academics work on the ethical crisis of sustainability. Likewise, the National Science Foundation’s interdisciplinary funding program for sustainability research makes no reference to ethics, and the word “ethic” appears in only one of the titles, abstracts or keywords of the 119 projects funded so far.

Vucetich and Nelson do not advance a particular interpretation of sustainability. Rather they show us why it is so important that all segments of society–academics and the general public, the public and private sectors–confront the inescapable dilemma that sustainability represents. 

“The first goal ought to be a citizenry that has enough ethical knowledge to be able to just talk about these issues intelligently,” Vucetich says.  Nelson goes on to say “This is unlikely to happen until social leaders, including academics from all disciplines develop for themselves enough ethical knowledge to be able to teach the broader public how to approach these questions.  Then, hopefully, answers will emerge.”

They conclude, “If we attain sustainability, it will not only require critical changes in technology, but also the most profound shift in ethical thought witnessed in the last four centuries.”

The National Science Foundation provided support for the research on which this article is based.

Michigan Technological University (mtu.edu) is a leading public research university developing new technologies and preparing students to create the future for a prosperous and sustainable world. Michigan Tech offers more than 130 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in engineering; forest resources; computing; technology; business; economics; natural, physical and environmental sciences; arts; humanities; and social sciences.

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