Project Learning Tree® (PLT) is an award-winning environmental education program of the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. 

PLT materials are designed for teachers and other educators, parents, and community leaders who work with youth from preschool through grade 12. The materials and programs include activity guides, secondary modules, service-learning grants, and a GreenSchools! program.

PLT advances environmental literacy and promotes stewardship.

PLT offers curriculum resources that use trees and forests as windows on the world. Through hands-on, interdisciplinary activities, PLT provides students with opportunities to investigate environmental issues and encourages them to make informed, responsible decisions.

PLT delivers professional development to educators through a vast network of partners

A coordinator in each state carries out PLT programs and recruits volunteer facilitators to lead workshops. Most PLT curriculum materials are available through professional development workshops but some, like this module, are available immediately for download.

Contact your state PLT Coordinator to find out about secondary workshops.

Learn more at PLT.org.

PINEMAP is the Pine Integrated Network: Education, Mitigation, and Adaptation Project.

PINEMAP focuses on loblolly pine (Pinus taeda), which accounts for about 80 percent of the 20 million acres of pine forests managed by private landowners in the Atlantic and Gulf coastal states from Virginia to Texas, plus Arkansas and Oklahoma. Eleven land-grant universities, the U.S. Forest Service, state climatologists, and Project Learning Tree® are collaborating in PINEMAP.

PINEMAP promotes understanding future risks to pine forests and opportunities to address critical challenges. 

PINEMAP integrates research, Extension, and education to enable southern pine landowners to manage forests to increase carbon sequestration, increase efficiency of nitrogen and other fertilizer inputs, and adapt forest management approaches to increase forest resilience and sustainability under variable future climates. PINEMAP research is designed to support private, managed pine plantations. Science-based concepts are applicable to many forests, in the South and elsewhere.

PINEMAP is one of three Coordinated Agriculture Projects (CAP) awarded by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) in 2011.

The purpose of these CAPs is to encourage agriculture and forestry producers to increase carbon sequestration and adapt practices to reduce the impact of anticipated climate variation.  An important aspect of the CAPs is sharing research findings with stakeholders, teachers, and the public. One way PINEMAP accomplishes this goal is to work closely with Project Learning Tree® (PLT) to develop, test, and implement this module.

You can learn more about PINEMAP online at www.pinemap.org.