The next Generation of Citizen Scientists are Ready to Monitor A Forest Giant on the Edge

Harvard Forest Ecologist,David Orwig, and Mentor Teacher, Kate Bennett, prepared a new group of teachers to get students out tracking the tiny Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, an insect that is causing a major shift in New England's forest right now.  

Teachers practiced labelling study trees and measuring new growth of hemlock trees at their branch tips to record on the Harvard Forest field data sheets that their students will use at their schoolyards this fall. 

 

The white "woolly" egg sacs of the invasive Hemlock Woolly Adelgid were barely visible this time of year.  These egg sacs will be easier to spot from November through early Spring, when students will go back outside to record presence of woolly Adelgid to report to the Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology study.

Dr. Orwig showed teachers the thinning of the Hemlock trees at Harvard Forest that has occurred since the Woolly Adelgid arrived several years ago.  

Teachers were able to see the new growth of  black birch saplings beginning to replace the dying hemlocks. We hope they will bring back the message to their students that "the forest never doesn't change".  As one species declines, another fills its place in the forest. Change is the one constant.

 

What Woolly Bully Teachers valued about the Summer Institute:

• Being able to go out and actually look at the trees and experience what we will do with the students was key for me. It's so helpful for me to actually do what I will be doing with the students instead of just reading a protocol .

•   Many things. 1.Observation crosses many areas of study. 2.So much specific, scientific knowledge that I find fascinating.

• I learned so much in a short time during today's workshop. The most valuable thing I learned is the importance of the hemlock to our environment.

• How easy it can be to implement a field study. How important the preteaching, set-up, and demonstrations will be before heading out into the field.

• I gained the knowledge I need to implement this study in my school. I especially valued the time we spent walking in the forest and talking about the woolly adelgids and hemlocks.

To learn more about Woolly Bully Schoolyard Ecology, go to: 

 Woolly Bully Schoolyard Ecology Webpages

Senior Ecologist, Dr. David Orwig's Webpages

Hemlock; A Forest Giant on the Edge  

Graph of Survey Results from teacher survey at the Summer Institute for Teachers at Harvard Forest

Thanks to all who contributed to guiding teachers to prepare for getting students doing real science based on real issues with help from real scientists....

The Our Changing Forests Schoolyard Ecology Project Is Growing

New Beginnings for the Our Changing Forests Project

With an expanded online database and project coach on board, a new group of teachers participated in a 2 day Our Changing Forests Schoolyard Ecology Summer Institute at Harvard Forest.

After spending 2 days at Harvard Forest learning from experts such as project ecologist, Joshua Rapp and author, Tom Wessels, teachers are beginning to bring students out to monitor their study plots in woodlands throughout Massachusetts.   Students in grades 6-12, from as far southeast as Middleborough and as far northwest as Charlemont  will be joining forces to paint a picture of our region's changing forests.

Ecologist, Joshua Rapp introduced the Our Changing Forests Protocol and driving scientific questions to teachers in the Fisher Museum

 A cow in this wooded pasture was a great window into how historic land use has impacted the New England landscape we see today.

Ecologist Josh Rapp showed examples of Wildlife sign such as these woodpecker holes that can be reported on the site survey data included on the Harvard Forest online database.

The group looked at an example of beech bark disease
 as an example of pathogens to be reported on the
 site survey.

Teachers practiced measuring 

diameter at breast height.

Teachers practiced aligning plot lines with cardinal directions using a compass. 

Tree diameter and Species I.D. are among the data students will be collecting in order to monitor species composition, density, carbon biomass storage, etc. of their local woodlands.

        

 
Each teacher had an opportunity to participate in practicing setting up study plots in small groups,
with assistance from project staff.

What Teachers said about Day 1 of the Our Changing Forests 

Summer Institute:

•  I am very excited by all the aspects of this research with regards to my curriculum.

• Interacting with ecologists and colleagues interested in the same topics has given me suggestions for activities that I can implement in the classroom in addition to the Changing Forests program.

•  I appreciate that every opportunity was taken by the staff to give us the most pertinent information in order to get started.

• I am looking forward to using the many opportunities for students to experience real world science practice with all of its challenges and pleasures.

• I love that you already have identified the new MA ST/E standards that connect to this project

•  I think it is great that Carrie (Project coach) will be available as I think that having that help will be useful as we start off. 

• A much more finely honed sense of how to frame the project for my students, and how to integrate the Changing Forests project into my curriculum, and how to flex my curriculum to be inspired by the project!

• The ability to set up a plot and the confidence to have my students identify and track the trees in the area. I feel confident that I understand what is asked of the program and that my students will enjoy the process of being out in the field.

• The ability to set up a plot for a field study and the tools necessary to accomplish that.

• All 3 parts were valuable, the background knowledge, practicing the protocol and looking at the database.

• Participation in a LTER (Long Term Ecological Research site).

Reading the Forested Landscape with Tom Wessels

Day 2 of the Summer Institute for Teachers was spent immersed in interpreting the Forest with author and Professor Emeritus, Tom Wessels

Teachers were busy writing notes at each of the 

many stops in the forest.  

Teachers told us what they appreciated about their time with Tom Wessels

All participating teachers rated their time with Tom Wessels as "Extremely Useful".

• Exploring forests gives you an infinite subject for study. I love the idea of land-use history as a mystery that we can solve, in this case using Forest Forensics

• Hints on what to key in to when determining previous use of the land.

• EVERYTHING!!! I learned so much in that session!

• The talk of land use over time and how the species all interact, no species lives independent of others

• Better able to identify trees and more knowledgeable about their characteristics. Understanding land design and history. 

• The skills, equipment and access to knowledge and support to create a meaningful field research experience for my students.

• Split the plot into 4's. Use Oliver for land use through time. Changing Forests protocol may be discrete, localized data collection, but the opportunities to branch out (changing climate, land-use planning, biodiversity, etc.) are infinite!

• I appreciated the emphasis on observation skills and the intelligence of the trees which we can use to build upon the data collection and analysis

• Confidence that I can teach children about our changing forests.

 

Teachers are now set to begin marking study plots and  engaging their students in collecting forest data tracking change over time in their local woodlands. Project Coach, Carey Lang, is visiting school based field sites this fall to help teachers get started.  We look forward to supporting these citizen scientists throughout this school-year and hope that  we will be working with these schools for years to come.

The expansion of our outreach capacity for this project is made possible with support from the Highstead Foundation in addition to ongoing support from the National Science Foundation's Long Term Ecological Research program and other private funders.  

Learn More about the Our Changing Forests Schoolyard Ecology Project:

• Northshore Magazine Article featuring this project:  :http://www.nshoremag.com/September-2016/student-scientists
• Project Protocols and Resources: Our Changing Forests Webpages
• Online database: Harvard Forest Schoolyard Database

Facing the Challenge of "Looking at Data" Together; Notes and Views from Schoolyard Ecology Data Workshop 2015

Photos by Greta VanScoy

I left the Looking at Data Workshop filled with inspiration and renewed optimism for this work we do together engaging children in schoolyard research.

As you will see from the graphs and comments from our exit survey, teachers seemed share in my optimism.   At the same time, I witnessed some folks who had frustrating moments and found this work to be challenging.  

I want to deeply honor everyone who had the courage to tackle the job of Looking at Data at our teacher workshop on Dec. 3rd at Harvard Forest. 

Teacher Feedback: 

I am just going to share 2 figures from our exit survey that perhaps give the most important feedback on the workshop and then share a range of teacher comments to show both the successes and challenges teachers experienced.  

As you can see above, most teachers went away from the workshop "extremely satisfied".  In thfigurebelow, you can see that while most of our participants felt they made significant progress 

towards their main goals, notice that one participant achieved significantly less progress than the 
others.

The teacher who expressed the least progress towards their goal stated:

• My goal was ambitious and I had fun getting sidetracked

More teacher comments reflecting the challenges of Looking at Data:

• The raw data from the field was very disorganized.
• This was a "wake up" call concerning my data. I was juggling so many other factors (losing trees, student access, safety) that it turns out I did not have as much data to determine growing season as I thought.
• I need to try and fail and fix, in order to translate the process for my students
• I wish I had entered the data ahead of time.
• I entered all of my data, which was a main goal for the day. I had difficulty making charts using Google Sheets because I was unfamiliar with the app. Having someone on hand who is familiar with Sheets would have been handy.

Teacher comments reflecting the successes of Looking at Data:

• "It was very helpful and it made me more confident in my understanding and usage of the data set. It also made me feel more confident in having my students use the data that they collected."
• I exceeded my goal and accomplished much more: calculating growing season, data entry of vp and phenology data, introducing Erin to HF and integrating her into the system, opportunity to share and collaborate with teachers and HF staff
• I have a better idea of the type of data that is available through the LTER database. I can identify reliable sources/complete data sources versus ones that have questionable reliability or ones that are incomplete.
• I learn more and more each time I come out... I always bring something back to my classroom that I can directly use.
• Graphs are wonderful and an important way to look at data. Betsy's presentation helped me to understand how to better look at graphs and how important it is to select the right graph for the data. For me graph reading can be challenging so any additional information and support I receive is so important. I suspect I am not the only person out there with graph reading challenges!

Many more  comments are available on the full survey. See link at bottom of this blog entry.

 

Challenges we experienced throughout the day that did not show up in the Survey:

• A first year teacher who had a high volume of data collected from her students found that there was not sufficient time to organize and submit all of the data in one session.  This is relatively common for first year teachers in the Buds, Leaves and Global Warming project.  While this project is by far our most popular, with very high success rates for data submittal, it is the most time consuming due to the sheer volume of data.  
• A long time contributor to the Buds and Leaves study was disappointed to find that her data was unable to tell the story of the changing length of the growing season due to a variety of issues with her field site shifts resulting from maintenance dept. tree cutting and snow removal, etc.  Another major obstacle in proved to be  insufficient data at the end of each growing season.
• Unclear protocol instructions related to showing the end of the growing season for beech and oak trees which often do not drop leaves in the fall was brought out in discussions with project staff. 
• A Changing Forests teacher found that the student data sheets were lacking important data points/information.  He did not have enough data to create a complete data set for this survey season.    
• Woolly Bully  teachers found that their one year of  data with zero adelgid yet found was not sufficient to create a meaningful graph. Cross site analysis was attempted but even there, graphing was not particularly worthwhile.  Project Ecologist, David Orwig, responded to these challenges by providing teachers with a broader data set to organize and graph,
• Technical difficulties on the part of HF staff in transferring and projecting documents from Mac users slowed the final presentation of teacher created graphs.

Teacher Followup:

• Now that they understand the process, Bud and Leaves new teachers will continue sorting, organizing, and submitting project data and emailing HF staff as questions arise.
• New Buds and Leaves teachers will have better sense of how to organize project data throughout the field season next time.
• Experienced Buds and Leaves teacher better understands the importance of sending students out to collect data at the end of the growing season and recording brown and crumpled beech and oak leaves as "fallen" in order to track the length of the growing season.
• Changing Forests Teacher will be aware of the need to double check student data sheets during field season in order to get a higher quality data set in the future.

Harvard Forest Staff  Follow-up:  

• We will work on revising the branch to tree level worksheet for easier use by teachers. Look for this in upcoming email notices.
• We are working on revising protocol materials and email messages to make the protocol for tracking the end of the growing season for oak and beech more clear.
• We will work to develop some guidelines for Mac users who want to share their graphs/work at HF so that we can project this work without as many interruptions in the future.
• We will become more familiar with Google Sheets prior to our next Data Workshop in order to better guide teachers using that program.

To see the entire exit survey with many more graphs and comments go to: https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-FQC22VRJ/

Slides from Looking at Data Workshop are posted on our website at:

Intro to Data Visualization by Betsy Colburn

Level I Data Workshop Presentation by Emery Boose

Show me a Picture and Tell me a Story; Looking at Data Presentation  by Betsy Colburn 

Stay Tuned for a follow-up document,  Looking at Data; Teacher-Created Graphs and Tables of Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology project data.  Look for an update with this document next month. 

THANK YOU to the Harvard Forest Staff  members who contributed to this workshop:  Betsy Colburn, Emery Boose, John O'Keefe, David Orwig, Greta VanScoy, Luca Morreale, Joshua Rapp, Clarisse Hart, Admin. crew, and Woods crew.

Kudos to Hubbard Brook Education representative, Jackie Wilson and NH Project Learning Tree Coordinator, Judy Silverberg for participating in this workshop.

Congratulations to teachers, Melanie McCracken, Louise Levy, Sally Farrow, Maryann Postans, Jana Matthai,  Mary Reed, Colleen Casey, Lori Primavera, Elisa Margarita, Warren Perdrizet, Jessica Farwell, Erin Pitkin, Meghan Lena, Sharon Desjarlais, Emilie Cushing, Thuy Bui, Sue Warburton, Mit Wanzer, and Maria Blewitt for taking your data skills to the next level!!!