Forest Ecology FOR 341 Scientific Paper Critiques

     An important aspect of being a professional forester is keeping up to date on advances in knowledge of forestry; learning must continue throughout your career in order for you to be a competent professional. One means of keeping current is reading current scientific literature about forestry. To help you develop that habit, and to help acquaint you with the variety of literature and sources of scientific information about forest ecology, I require as part of this course that you use the library, read three current (published since last May) scientific journal papers of your choosing and write a critical review of each paper. Each paper selected must focus on some aspect of  forest ecology (not silviculture, management, economics or policy); i.e. be about an aspect of ecology that we cover in this course, or on a closely-related topic. Use course outline and text as guides for choices.

     Each critique must be one full page of text (40 or more lines), well-written and edited, single-spaced, typed in a font and type style that is very close to this size (Times Roman 12) with minimum (maximum 0.5 inch) top margin, one-inch left and bottom margins and one and one-half inch right margin. Each critique must be confined to one page. These criteria have practical value. You will practice being  thoughtful and critical, concise and organized. You are expected to think logically, thoroughly and critically, and organize and write about your thoughts.

Each critique submitted should be in the format indicated below, with critique number (1-3), due date and your student number at the top of the page in one line, followed by the  bibliographic citation of the paper in the format indicated (i.e.that used in Canadian Journal of Forest Research).

Fried, J. S., J. R. Boyle, J. C. Tappeiner II, & K. Cromack, Jr.  1990.  Effects of bigleaf maple on soils in Douglas-fir forests. Can. J. For. Res. 20: 259-266. (Note the "20" is the volume of the journal).

The rest of your one page critique should include the following in the indicated order, using the bold, underlined headings to begin each section and organize your writing..  Single space text.