Year 1
AP Environmental Science students aim to increase biodiversity and protect watershed health with garden project and other citizen science endeavors
2017-18 AP Environmental Science Class (from left to right) Shawntay Mitchell, Gwendolyn Drake, McKenzie Pytlak, Kency Griffin, Lindsey Bryant, Tenesia Thomas, Jada Early, Blake Myers, Madeline Zerial, Laron Richardson, Alexander Kirsch, Raven Davis-Whitaker, Jaheem Hersey (hidden), Matthew Moore, Christian Marshall, Joel Kuzich, Asia Williams, Maira (Mackenzie) Gajda, Reagen Simmons, Julia Cheng, Priscilla Watts not pictured Sterling Thomas, DeMario Walker
I was accepted into the Great Lakes Watershed Field Course in the spring of 2017. The program was funded with a B-WET grant through NOAA and was facilitated by Inland Seas in Suttons Bay and Earth Force. The goal of the program was to give teachers the tools to increase student engagement through experiential and place-based learning, to help students plan and enact an environmental stewardship action project and to increase student knowledge and awareness of watershed health and issues in Michigan. As a bonus, my students will get to travel to Sutton’s Bay to participate in the Schoolship program on board the Inland Seas - a traditional tall ship schooner; to collect data and survey the health of Lake Michigan through observing and measuring physical, chemical, and biological indicators.
After completing several inventories of our school and the areas immediately adjacent to our school, the class made observations and I helped guide them to question how some of these observations may be connected to environmental health. Students identified several issues which they thought were important and actionable, then the class split into groups to research what would be involved to address their assigned issue. Each group presented an overview of a potential project to address the issue they researched to the rest of the class. The project that the class decided on was a combination of removing invasive species from the storm water detention area and planting a garden that works as both a pollinator garden and as a rain garden to replace what we remove. Several years ago there was a rain garden in this location that was installed by a Boy Scout troop, but it was mowed down one summer. Consequently, the area has been colonized by invasive Phragmites. Our inventory revealed very low species diversity at this site, and wind often blows unsightly trash into the grass where it is caught. A group of students made an appointment with our superintendent and presented the class proposal to him - which he supported and approved. As my students worked on this project, they not only learned about watersheds, invasive species, and biodiversity; They also learned how to take the first steps (and practiced doing so) to help make positive changes in their community.
Preliminary research found several species of native flowering plants to introduce that can withstand both wet and dry periods, and they also realized that they need to choose a variety of species to ensure some would be flowering from spring all the way through fall so the pollinators we are attracting will have a stable food source. Plants such as milkweed will be included because they also act as a host plant for Monarch butterfly larvae. Students started to look for plants that would provide potential habitat for pollinators, birds and small mammals. By increasing the number of pollinators in our garden, we will also attract animals like songbirds that use the pollinators as a food source.
Through the winter students are used yardmap.org and other Habitat Network resources (made available through the Nature Conservancy and The Cornell Lab of Ornithology )to do a deep study to learn exactly which native species would be best to plant in our garden. They also learned how to arrange the plants so that we maximize the benefit for pollinators, birds, and other wildlife while also looking attractive and serving as an effective rain garden. The space that is overrun with Phragmites is roughly 15 x 48 yards. They created a garden plan that broke up the area into several spaces with a walking path dividing each space. Students learned which species of plants to include according to the soil type, water availability, sun availability and which pollinators are found in our area. They also learned about other factors they need to consider when planting a pollinator garden such as safe access to clean water in all seasons for both insects and birds, the inclusion of elements such as snags, nesting boxes and feeders, and what type of food is best to use for winter bird feeding. We cleaned our school’s abandoned greenhouse and purchased shelving to establish work areas that allowed us to attempt to grow milkweed and a few other native plants over the winter. Ultimately, we learned that if we plan to try to plant in our greenhouse we will need to have a watering system that will help our fragile plants make it through the weekend without us there.
While we were relatively successful at killing the Phragmites, we ran into some issues when it came to removal. Our original plan to remove the biomass when the pond froze did not come to fruition. There were only a few days where the pond was frozen solid, and we were not able to align removal work days with the freeze. We opted to wait until spring but unfortunately there were already red wing blackbird nests in the old biomass so we left the south portion of our area for the following year to clean up.
While students were investigating these issues they decided it was important to learn about how this might affect the rest of the watershed which led us to join the Friends of the Rouge Education Project spring monitoring. From there students wondered how other wetlands contributed to the health of our watershed, so we investigated some vernal pools with the Vernal Pool Patrol. Finally, this culminated with looking out at the bigger picture of the Great Lakes and how we can use the same kinds of techniques we used to monitor the river and vernal pools to look at the health of Lake Michigan when we partnered with Inland Seas Education Association to collect data to assess and monitor water quality and biodiversity in Lake Michigan.