This is a place-based, community ecology course which focuses on our central New England region and covers many of the major principles of ecology. It also includes learning how to identify our common forest trees, understory plants and game animals, as well as learning to look for evidence to determine the disturbance history of our current forested lands. It involves weekly field trips to ecosystems like a nearby kettle bog, Plum Island’s Parker River National Wildlife Refuge and our local central New England forests. The reading list can include Wessel’s Reading the Forested Landscape and The Myth of Progress, Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac and Peterson’s Eastern Trees.