GEORGETOWN

Students were well-prepared for teacher Evan James’ questions on Friday, as they prepare themselves to help develop an ambitious plan for the community’s town-owned forests.

James, a math/science teacher, asked the fifth- and sixth-graders all sorts of pertinent questions, and received a good many informed responses. Emma Roth-Wells summed those response up astutely.

“We’re connecting with people and making them aware of the forests,” Roth-Wells said.

Students in grades 4, 5 and 6 at Georgetown Central planted the seeds, so to speak, of Project Canopy last spring, when they taped large trees with blue ribbons, and planted sensors that measure temperature and light. In December, the town received a grant from Project Canopy, a Maine Forest Service ini- tiative, to engage the public in managing Round-the-Cove Forest, near the school, and Ipcar Preserve.

This autumn, the students will monitor forest health and climate, as part of a longterm project.

“You are all going to be tree stewards — forest stewards,” James told his pupils. “That’s what we are going to be doing, collecting data and making sense of it.”

Following Roth-Wells’ succinct response, James posed an equally succinct follow-up question: “Why do we care? Nothing’s been done to these forested areas in about 100 years in Georgetown, so why do we care?”

For one thing, Macy Cole answered, the presence of trees benefits water quality, and “we live off water.”

James concurred.

“They’re a natural filter,” the teacher said. “They take harmful elements, and turn them into good ones.”

James then reviewed the “four overarching goals” of Project Canopy:

— To help protect air and water quality.

— To protect trees from being cut down.

— To moderate catastrophic weather events.

— To mitigate the effects of C02, which affects air quality, and mitigate climate change.

“We’ve been producing these greenhouse gases for nearly a century,” James said.

Sensors and other instruments provided by the Georgetown Island Educational Foundation will help the students with this important study. As Dory Kolis pointed out during the class, those sensors can monitor moisture, among other things.

Emily Martin elaborated.

“We’ll use the CO2 and oxygen lab quest centers to find a connection between CO2 and oxygen levels,” she said. “Also, we’ll find the chemical composition of the soil.”

Those samples, James said, will be sent to the University of Maine.

James and his students will work throughout the school year on Project Canopy, and gather loads of data. They will try to make a connection between the development of forests and climate change.

This week, the students will begin work on the Round-The- Cove Forest plots.

“I think this is a great opportunity for you to become field scientists — communicating with the community about the importance of this project,” James said. “I’m excited about it. I hope you’re excited about it.”

¦ STUDENTS IN grades 4, 5 and 6 at Georgetown Central planted the seeds of Project Canopy last spring, when they taped large trees with blue ribbons, and planted sensors that measure temperature and light.