Great Smoky Mountains National Park is one of the most biologically diverse units of the National Park System. And now you can get a feel for that diversity without leaving the comfort of your home (though hopefully you'll be inspired to visit the park).

Using a $1 million grant from Toyota, Great Smoky has launched a new on-line educational initiative that is intended to make the park’s natural resource and science programs and research findings much more accessible to the public.

The new “Dispatches From the Field” is an online, bi-monthly source of information from scientists, resource managers, and park partners. Each issue of “Dispatches” includes an in-depth profile of researchers and resource managers in the park, as well as volunteer and educational opportunities. Through photographs, narratives and podcasts, it aims to reconnect citizens with science by inviting them into their public lands.

The first podcast takes viewers into the field on a beetle release to protect hemlocks from the Hemlock woolly adelgid. The podcast is closed captioned and was produced entirely using in-house staff resources (including the dulcimer soundtrack) and using equipment purchased using 2008 Centennial Challenge funding.

You can view these Dispatches at this site.