Dr. Lowman has been invited to a tree-house building workshop at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia in Spain. Below are some photos and links.

• IaaC Projects
• IaaC Invitation Summary (PDF)

TREE Foundation is celebrating its 10th birthday in 2010, as well as the 10th anniversary of our flagship project, the Myakka River State Park canopy walkway. Over the past 10 years, thousands of visitors have learned about forest canopies by walking through the treetops, and hundreds of thousands of additional visitors to our websites have learned about forest conservation. In honor of our decadal birthday, TREE is launching a tree-planting project for southwest Florida. Beginning on April 22 (Earth Day), TREE is partnering with Turner Tree and Landscape of Bradenton, Florida to plant out four-foot high native live oak trees (Quercus virginiana) at sites that need greening. For every $100 donated to the canopy walkway or to TREE’s environmental education programs, two trees will be planted in your honor. This project will not only add much-needed canopy shade to southwest Florida, but it will also boost our environmental programs with your generous contributions. Thank you, Turner Tree and Landscape, for this partnership!
Thank you for your support of Tree Research, Education and Exploration!

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Magda from the University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden writes:

I found out about you and your adventures while doing research for my master thesis project which can be described as an alternative world guide book but in the form of a game.

The project/game encourage travellers to explore other things than usually described in a guidebook. The whole game will be in english and is not site-specific but can be used anywhere in the world.

I will also make a small book which deals with exploring the concept of traveling from different perspectives – historically, philosophically, personally, politically etc.

I am contacting you to ask if you would be interested in answering four questions to include in this small book? Would be extremely interesting to have your view upon this!

If you have time, here are the questions:

Below are the questions with Dr. Lowman’s answers:

1. Is there some particular journey that you still dream about doing? (It could be a possible or impossible journey).

I dream about going from the headwaters to the mouth of the Amazon, before it has been fragmented and altered by oil company leases.

2. Tell me about your first travel experience!

My first travel experience was going to the state science fair in 5th grade (I ended as the only girl in a large auditorium of boys exhibiting or experimenting) — I won second prize for my wildflower collections and research — but my dad forgot to put gas in the car and we ended up coasting down the hill into Syracuse New York at 6 AM in the morning –a dubious start to my career in science!

3. Which travel experience has affected you the most?

I believe seeing the Amazon with my children — although I am passionate about rain forest conservation, I am also a devoted mom and so sharing this amazing world of biodiversity with two enthusiastic young boys was truly a special moment for me.

4. I you could bring a person of your choice to any destination – which destination would you choose and who would you take with you?

I would love to take Bill and Melinda Gates to the Amazon — so they would realize that health (of people) relies on health of the planet, and their very generous foundation might share some of its generosity to environmental conservation issues

5. Describe a special meeting that you have had during a journey!

My most special meeting was with the 15 chiefs of a remote village in Western Samoa, when they chanted and drank kava for 7 hours while they decided if we should build them a canopy walkway to help them keep from logging their forest (see the second chapter in my book, Its a Jungle Up There, which provides all the fun details of that day!!)

6. Where in the world have you found the most beautiful tree? Describe it!

My favorite tree is the FIG tree (Ficus watkinsiana in Australia, but there are other Ficus species around the world). i wrote about figs in the last chapter of my first book, Life in the Treetops. Any tree that starts its life from the top, and sends its roots down to the ground, has to be VERY COOL and also very smart in the sense that it is guaranteed to have light which is a limited commodity if you start growing from the forest floor upward.