The project will use data from scientific studies of forest structure and function. "Avatars" (human users) in the virtual forest will be able to do the typical things humans do in the forest, such as measure, explore, and plant trees. But in addition to these normal abilities, they will also have super-human powers, such as the power to control time, fly, shrink, grow, see carbon-flux, take an ant's perspective, or call rain, wind and ice storms. In addition to overcoming some physical constraints such as gravity or physical access to trees, a "virtual forest" might help solve some communication challenges. Each researcher looks at the forest in a different way, using a variety of specialized instruments. Conveying such "world-view" concepts in words is problematic, often resulting in the proliferation of highly specific (esoteric) language, which few understand. Many important assumptions (such as spatial scale) are implicitly understood only by the learned few, and effectively exclude those not "in-the-know." Our solution to this problem is the creation of the avatar's super-powers based on experimental meta-data, which would provide such information on an intuitive level (spatial scale, for example, reflected by the size of the avatar).

The project will focus on:

1) presenting scientific information in an interesting manner, that will not be visible from the Canopy Walkway to a lay audience.

2) combining that information in an artistic manner that captures the imagination and awe that we feel in a natural place of majesty and beauty.

3) eventually will expand the focus to presenting information in innovative ways to researchers for visualization and modeling.