Young Geographer of the Year 2010

Young Geographer of the Year is an annual competition organised via the GEOGRAPHICAL magazine by the RGS-IBG.

This year's competition theme is 'Sorting the wood from the trees: the future of forests'. Prizes include a ticket to the RGS's expedition and fieldwork training weekend, plus book tokens and atlases. The competition is open to young geographers throughout the UK and Europe under the age of 19 years.

Why are forests and trees important to us locally, nationally and globally? Locally they may add to our enjoyment of parks, gardens and the general environment. On a national scale, they provide habitats for many animals and plants, supporting biodiversity and providing raw materials Globally, nearly four billion hectares of forest cover the Earth's surface, sustaining many different societies and ecosystems. But the extent of forests around the world has reduced by 40 per cent since people first started to clear trees to provide space for agriculture and settlements some 11,000 year ago. Despite this, vast forests continue to cover parts of the Russian Federation, Brazil and Canada. And even in smaller nations, forests are still important - covering 90 per cent of the world's most forested nation, the Solomon Islands. Whether on your local street or in a tropical rainforest, trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow and release oxygen into the atmosphere through a process called photosynthesis. This means that forests act as a 'sink' for carbon, and it's estimated that they have soaked up about 10 per cent of the carbon emitted through human activities since 1800. When forests are felled or burnt, either by natural causes, such as age, or natural fires or through human actions CO2 is released into the atmosphere. This gas is one of the 'greenhouse gases' that contribute to climate change. In finding your way to sorting the geographical wood from the trees, you might want to think about some of the following questions:

• Why are some forests protected and some cleared?
• What impact are growing levels of human wealth and population having on the use and extent of forests, and what implications might current and future changes have?
• How can people best use the resources that forests provide while still ensuring that they exist for future generations?
• Do all forests need protection?
• What might our society have been like had Britain's forests not been cleared by our ancestors?
• And, more locally, how do we use and look after our forest and trees in the UK?

Forests and trees intimately connect people with their environment, help mitigate against the extremes of climate change, sustain countless species and support the wealth of many economies. From your favourite tree to the world's largest forest, from the green shoots of a sapling to the majesty of an ancient tree, the future of the world's forest is held in our hands. As Young Geographers, your role is to help us map out what that future might be. Entries for the competition can be submitted in any appropriate format, be it a written report, a short video film, photographic essay, an annotated map, an audio file or a mix of any of these. Remember it is the geography that will be judged, not the technical wizardry of the entries. To be a winner you must show the judges that you have undertaken a thorough investigation for the competition task. We want you to discover more about the world in which you live in an exciting and stimulating way.

Good luck to all those who enter....