Celebrate Earth Week with Sarah Hart, assistant professor in the Forest and Rangeland Stewardship department at Warner College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University, who details our Earth’s need for forests.

“Forests are important to our Earth,” Hart said, “because they provide a lot of key services including things like fresh water and carbon sequestration, which helps with climate, and a lot of research opportunities, too.”

But forests need help to thrive now more than ever, said Hart, who runs HART Lab, which focuses on disturbance ecology and forest biogeography, and is housed in the FRS department.

“A lot of the current threats that we have in our forest systems are from things like wildfire and bark beetle outbreaks that really require people to think collaboratively about how to manage these systems,” Hart said.

Students in the Forest and Rangeland Stewardship department address the issues forests face and help protect the resources forests provide every day through their research, outreach and service.

Explore our Forest and Rangeland Stewardship major at https://col.st/Jzsb2.