Climate History and Geomorphic Heritage as a Land-Use Management Tool

At the Morris Arboretum, Thursday February 16; 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.

Instructor Mark Demitroff, Pinelands Geographer, Dept. of Geography, Permafrost Group, University of Delaware

Fee: $135 (includes lunch)

This course carries 5.5 CEUs for ISA certified arborists and 6 CEUs for PA landscape architects.

The Pinelands National Reserve was designated a United Nations International Biosphere Reserve in 1988. This session explores the Reserve’s Ice-Age legacy. The cold, dry, and windy conditions that existed during the last cold period have few modern terrestrial equivalents. Climate-driven movement of frozen and thawing ground, along with strong winds from the nearby Laurentide Ice Sheet, have helped to fashion the local terrain into the unique landscape that we value today as the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

Many of these periglacial (cold, non-glacial) features today provide critical habitat for rare, threatened, and endangered plants and animals. Learn how landforms like spungs, savannahs, cripples, blue holes, and dunes were woven together in a geographic tapestry of interactions between nature and society, from early man through railroad-era settlement. It is hoped that wider understanding of the Reserve’s natural and human history will spur greater efforts to protect valued resources both in the Pine Barrens and elsewhere.

To register online: www.business-services.upenn.edu/arboretum/ed_arboriculture.shtml   or call the Morris Arboretum

at 215-247-5777, ext. 125.   Visit us on the web: www.morrisarboretum.org