BU Project GLACIER

	Joshua Mantooth Degree Sought : Ph.D. Research Focus: Forest Ecology School Name : Timilty Middle School Teaching Partner: Angel Simpson Joshua's Project GLACIER Site
Joshua Mantooth is a 6th year PhD student in the Department of Earth & Environment, studying tree growth and energy storage using the temperate forest biome of the eastern US as a case study. He has established forest inventory plots at 10 sites across the eastern US to determine what spatial scales and environmental drivers explain variability in annual tree growth, and whether tree carbon reserves match growth-storage tradeoffs predicted by life history theory. He is using this information to determine how tree carbon reserves vary across the climate of eastern US forests and whether improving tree carbon reserve dynamics in an ecosystem model improves our ability to capture tree demography and forest carbon fluxes.
Joshua is partnered with Angel Simpson at James P. Timilty Middle School located in Roxbury. Mrs. Simpson is an experienced 6th grade science teacher who has taught at Timilty for over 10 years. Joshua and Angel are developing new hands-on and inquiry based lesson plans that will organically integrate climate change science into the existing curriculum on human body systems and weather. One example of this is exploring the urban heat island effect by measuring and discussing the heat transfer properties of the different substances that comprise the urban environment.