Volunteers Needed To Help Survey Tree Arthropods in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park

If you love science, want to get your hands dirty, become more intimately knowledgeable and help the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, here is your chance to do something exciting and help advance science in the GSMNP.

For those who are seriously interested in helping collect specimens and data compilation on an ongoing long term basis, Discover Life in America (DLIA), the non-profit organization coordinating the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) in GSMNP, will host the Tree Team Training program beginning at 9:00 am on June 18th at the Twin Creeks Nature Center just outside Gatlinburg off Cherokee Orchard Road.

For those who wish to partake in this program, you will be collecting insects, spiders and other arthropods specimens at what is considered easily accessible areas, on both Tennessee and North Carolina sides of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

You will be trained and will make use of a variety of collection techniques in order to survey these animals so that not only can the vitality, but unknown ecological linkages between flora and fauna can be studied.

Registration in advance is required. You must contact Todd Witcher the executive director of DLIA, at (865)430-4757 or email him at todd@dlia.org.

Save The Planet Series at the Hard Rock Cafe in Gatlinburg TN with Discover Life in America

Come join us at the Hard Rock Café in Gatlinburg Tennessee on June 8th, 2010 from 6 pm to 8 pm for a community discussion where art, culture, and science meet with the folks from Discover Life in America.

Full menu available and people of all ages are welcome to join in this informal discussion with Discover Life in America experts on this season's favorite nightlife - the synchronized fireflies of the Great Smoky Mountains.

The Discover Life in America is conducting the Great Smoky Mountains National Park's All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory project which identified to date more than 17,000 species in the GSMNP of which 923 are new to science and more than 6,000 were no known to exist in the park!

Synchronized Fireflies in the Great Smoky Mountains

Celebrating Ferns of the Smokies in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Thanks to Discover Life in America and Anna Porter Public Library you can enjoy a free exhibition of 20 high resolution scans of the Ferns of Great Smoky Mountains National Park from May 15 through August 15, 2009.

See ferns as you have never seen them before and appreciate the fine textures colors and shapes brought out by these high resolution scans so that you can really appreciate the beauty and diversity of ferns and other plants in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

There will also be a presentation and discussion about the progress of the Great Smoky Mountains national parks All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI) project on Thursday, June 11 from 6:30 - 8:30 at the Anna Porter Library.

Anna Porter Public Library
158 Proffit Road
Gatlinburg, TN 37738
(865) 436-5588