KIDS IN THE FIELD - HIGH SCHOOL FIELD EDUCATION ON THE ST CROIX RIVER AS A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF LONG TERM MONITORING

Toben D. Lafrancois, Edgewood High School, Madison, WI

High school students have taken part in some of the best recent work on the Saint Croix River. The work of Matthew S. Berg and his students from Grantsburg, WI shows that high school students can produce high quality scientific research. Recently, Edgewood High School (Madison, WI) moved its growing high school field ecology course from Madeline Island, WI to the larger facilities at St. Croix State Park, MN. This 12 day course takes place in early summer and usually supports as many as 30 students. The course covers a wide array of topics including basic field biology, earth sciences, forest and stream ecology, environmental ethics, and scientific study design. The students conduct both field and laboratory exercises, attend indoor and outdoor lectures, and ultimately run scientific projects of their own design. While the spatial extent, time period and resources of this course are limited, there is a lot of potential to turn these field and lab exercises into a long term data set that would be useful to resource managers and scientists. The purpose of this poster is to introduce the kind of work these students are doing and solicit comments on how we can improve or reformat the field and lab work so that it would maximize its long term usefulness.