Community Forestry Students' Projects

Danielle, Susan, Erika

We are going to bring lettuce seeds and soil to a school in Walpole. We will then help the children at the Elementary school plant the seeds within the soil. This will help with a community garden at their school and will progress throughout the years. This shows the elementary kids how to do hands on work with plants and can spike interest for these kids to attend the Aggie. It will teach them what the plant science department at the Aggie is like. 

Jamie Baronie & Allie Glennon

We are planning on doing a community-outreach based community forestry project. In Boston, many families struggle to put food on the table for their families. And when they are able to, fresh fruits and vegetables are not always a first priority because they are expensive and sometimes hard to come by in a city environment. We want to conquer two things with this project: to provide fresh produce to families that wouldn’t otherwise have it, and show families how easy and accessible fresh produce could be, even in a city like Boston. We will grow easy to maintain crops, like lettuce, potatoes, carrots and others, in milk crates. These milk crates will be distributed to financially struggling families, which we will become aware of be working hand in hand with the Greater Boston Food Pantry. We hope to widen the use of home-grown produce, as well as increase the amount of healthy meals financially struggling families actually get to enjoy. 

Michael Laracy

            New Cafeteria/ Library Entrance

For My Community Forestry project I am going to design and potentially install a new landscape for the entrance into the Cafeteria/ Library building. With this new landscape I will coordinate the three existing beds, add new plant material, add a small hardscape area, new mulch, and a barrier to protect the area from foot traffic. The main idea for my project is to make the entrance more aesthetically pleasing, while still being functional for the location.

Keegan Nelligan

For my project I am researching Urban-Wildland Interface. I plan on presenting this topic to the class through a PowerPoint presentation on Google Chrome. I would also like to incorporate a field trip to the Aggie backwoods or to the Hilltop farm to show actual real-life Urban-Wildland Interface in our community. I would try to show the class wildlife tracks, scat and possibly wild animals, such as deer and birds. My mission is to teach the class that the wilderness is not as far away as what they think.

Myles Burke 

Helioculture is a process from turning sunlight into a reusable fuel.  In summary it takes CO2 pumped into a tube that has water in it called a solar converter.  Over time this tube will grow algae that now has CO2 in it.  Then in time the tube will be emptied all the emissions are pumped elsewhere and the CO2 filled algae is put into drums and sold as fuel.  It can be used as a gas substitute.  It’s a up and coming new fuel source and when it’s at its peak will be cheaper than oil. 

Alan

Fellow classmates, I will be doing a project on the parks in Boston. I will be mentioning parks such as Olmsted park, the Arnold arboretum, franklin park, and many others. These parks all have great historic value to Boston. The parks have a great value and power of nature like no other. I have worked as maintenance in these parks the last 3 summers. These parks mean a great deal to me and I would like to share my joy of them with you, my classmates.

Justin Albertinetti & John Rice

Lettuce grow in hydroponics

For my project I am going to use a floating raft hydroponic system to grow lettuce, as an experiment I am going to use three different chambers and find what air concentration in the water yields the best crop.  By learning this we can later use hydroponics to grow food at the school.  Most people see hydroponics as a means to grow drugs when in actuality many places are beginning to use hydroponics to grow crops such as tomatoes lettuce and squash in a way that is both faster and more cost effective than in soil.

Amy Murphy

In this Community Forestry class I will be researching and presenting artificial nesting structures for the urban communities. I will be mainly look at the city of Quincy and focusing on the marshes where you would find the endangered Snowy Egrets. I am looking forward to this class and  horizoning my knowledge  of the endangered Snowy Egret. The artificial nesting projects are important because in urban area we need to cut down trees to grow businesses but we need to conserve the land for the animals.   I am looking forward to this class because it gives me a chance to research into a topic I enjoy learning about.

Tetiana

For my project in community forestry, I am doing community forestry in politics, economics and government. These three topics tie into the same thing when it comes to community forestry. That is how much money, time and effort we spend on community forestry as a state, country, as well as worldwide. As of today and in the past. It will show how we change and evolve and take care of the forest throughout time and how the government and other political leaders do with community forestry.

Chantal Bussiere

I'll be doing a research and design based project while I wait for the snow to melt. I'm researching urban forests and their benefits on their local area, and then I will design one for a suburban residential block that could be implemented in Massachusetts. I will consider the size of the area, the housing design surrounding it, and optimal native species. A variety of plant species will be selected to create a balanced habitat that suits the topography, reduce pollution, tolerate the human environment, and host wildlife.

Drew Conlon

For my Community Forestry project I am going to be researching and creating a PowerPoint presentation about how we can design urban forests to reduce climate change. I will be focusing on the different possible ways that can be incorporated in achieving this. The problem with urban areas is that people don’t care for and manage trees/shrubs properly and this just makes the area look bad. I will mainly be focusing on highly populated cities like Boston, Brockton, etc.

C BARBA

My project is to research which trees environmentally, ecologically, and economically make the best street trees for my home town in Franklin. I will then contact my town to ask about their plan for street trees in newly developed areas of town and discuss the current status of our town’s street trees.Potentially, I will discuss my own ideas with the Department of Public Works and see if I can encourage any progress in the town. 

Eric Frechette and Matt Barry 

For our project we are redesigning a sign for the front entrance of the school. The sign is going to have our school logo and name at the top of the sign. Then below it will have an electronic sign that relays messages like the plastic letters that we have to put in the sign now. 

Noah Greenblatt

For my project I’ll be exploring both the removal of invasive species and alternative uses to the plants in order to make your problem work for you! Using our knowledge of how each invasive reacts to certain environments will allow us to potentially use some invasives as firewood, furniture, and medicines while learning how to kill the plants we leave behind. Our other focus will be the price of such removal and how to do it yourself as opposed to a private contractor and benefits to removing the plant. Expect a work party!

Rachel Lawlor & Chris Durant

Our Group will work together to create a functional, sustainable trend blog using Tumblr. It will include sustainable techniques, Photography and various research as well as landscape designs, and organic techniques . We will be building a sustainable garden and post pictures of our progress as well. We will be using a funding website to try and buy non-GMO seeds.

Chris Rosa     

During community forestry class I chose to do my project on Urban Infrastructure. The question asked is, ”What elements in urban infrastructure conflict with planting?” Since I’m from the city, I thought I would take on this challenging topic. Urban infrastructure has to deal with buildings in the city. This is a problem that is affecting our communities.  There have been technologies developed to minimize this problem. I will present this project in a power Point presentation. I will have pictures and summaries of Urban infrastructure in each slide.

Siobhan Joyce

My community forestry project is tree mapping. I am going to go around campus and survey how many different types of trees we have and the exact location of the tree. And i am going to take a log of how many of those species we have on campus. And which is the most popular compared to other ones. Tree mapping is a good way of knowing what common trees you have and the rare types of trees we have on campus.

Vinny

Hydroponics is the next step in food production for our culture. My project will focus on the way we can implement it into the new world and go over how to own and operate your own system. I will cover the broad spectrum of modern hydroponics and can do a presentation/ demonstration.

Nick Guerini, Zach Giovanella, Eric Frechette

Our community forest project is to explain and to teach the class how to efficiently snow plow a driveway and parking lot. We are also going to teach the class how to propose a bid to get a plowing account or any other landscaping job. Nick and Zach are going to example the ways to plow in steps and from from first hand experience. We will have powerpoints and pictures for our presentation to the class.