For more information contact:
Mike Greife
News Bureau Manager
660-543-4640 mgreife@ucmo.edu
WARRENSBURG, MO (April 4, 2008) – Viewers of KMOS-TV, channel 6, the University of Central
Missouri’s public broadcasting station, will have an opportunity to view the episode of the PBS program “Wild
Chronicles” containing a segment featuring a UCM research team from the Department of Biology and Earth
Science.
The episode of the program featuring the UCM students and faculty will be rebroadcast on KMOS-TV at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 9, and 8:30 p.m. Saturday, April 12.
The program originally was broadcast Feb. 22 on PBS stations across the country that feature the program in regular program schedules. Although “Wild Chronicles” is not part of the regular KMOS-TV schedule, the station was able to obtain for rebroadcast the episode of the program featuring UCM’s research team.
“Smoky Mountains Treetop Exploration” is a 5-7 minute segment is taken from footage filmed by
National Geographic Society television producer Jason Orfanon during July, 2007 in the Great Smoky
Mountains National Park. Boyd Matson serves as the host and narrator.
The storyline documents the exploration of the tree canopy using the double rope climbing technique by the UCM research team. Two graduate student climbers, Sydney E. Everhart and Courtney M. Kilgore, demonstrate how to access, climb, and gather samples of myxomycetes, macrofungi, lichens, mosses, liverworts and ferns from the tree canopy. Harold W. Keller, visiting professor of biology at UCM, coordinates the ground
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crew and serves as the principal investigator for the research project titled “RUI: Biodiversity and Ecology of
Tree Canopy Biota in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.”
This project was financially supported in part by the National Geographic Committee for Research and
Exploration Grant, National Science Foundation, Biodiversity Surveys and Inventories Award, Division of
Environmental Biology, and Discover Life in America Award.
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