Student Focus - Nal Tero
I’m a Maine native, but after heading to Massachusetts to do my undergrad at Brandeis University, I ended up traveling all over the place – to Senegal with the Peace Corps, along the Appalachian Trail, and to North Carolina to work as a tree climber – before coming home to start my M.S. at the University of Maine.
At UMaine, I’m working as part of a team with another graduate student, Stacy Birch, and our advisors Drs. Robert Seymour and Alan White. Our research (funded by the Northeastern States Research Cooperative) is comparing stands managed under a system of gap-based ecological silviculture to unmanaged second- and old-growth benchmark reserves, all located within Baxter State Park’s Scientific Forest Management Area. We just finished our fieldwork season, and will use these data to evaluate how the structures of the managed stands compare to those of the benchmarks.
I’m still an avid tree climber, and I’ve even been able to integrate climbing into my work while helping out a separate project on white pine crown architecture. Life in Orono outside of work is equally fun: I recently got engaged, and my fiancée and I have been splitting our time between fly fishing, friends, and gardening in our backyard – with an emphasis on fly fishing.
