WATERSHED BIOLOGY FIELD TRIP

Watershed Biology Trip Group

2018, Sacramento, California, USA

Evelin Pelayo knew that if her fellow students were to become stewards of the watershed, they first needed to engage directly with it through hands-on study of our natural resources. Without this direct experience, she felt it would be more difficult for her classmates to feel connected to the natural world and make choices to protect it. Therefore, Evelin wrote a proposal to fund a field trip to Donner Summit, where students would collect and analyze data under the guidance of Headwaters Institute staff.

Watershed Biology Trip 1

Each group studied a different aspect of Watershed Biology. For example, her group studied water depth and flow in relation to the number and species of invertebrates, while another sampled vegetation at various distances from water to compare.

Evelin’s Caring for Our Watersheds proposal and funding from Nutrien helped more of her classmates have this unique experience, in which they learned about scientific data collection techniques, the interaction of biotic and abiotic factors, the local environment, and each other on a whole new level.

Putah Creek Clean-Up

2018, Sacramento/Davis, California, USA

While Simon Downes-Toney goes to school at The MET Sacramento, he lives in the nearby town of Davis, California. Therefore, when choosing a location for his Caring for Our Watersheds project, he chose a place near and dear to his home and heart, the banks of Putah Creek.

Putah Creek flows through the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden, where many students and residents utilize a paved path along the waterway. Simon organized a clean-up day, where he and his fellow classmates walked this riparian corridor and collected trash and debris.

This simple, straightforward project helped keep trash from entering the waterway, protected wildlife and waterfowl that reside there, and cleaned and beautified a public space enjoyed by many in the community.

A VERTICAL GARDEN DEMO

2018, Sacramento, California, USA

Vertical Garden Demonstration

As Ella Mills and Ava Siemering of George Washington Carver High School shared an interest in horticulture, they knew they wanted to grow plants as part of their Caring for Our Watersheds project.

After doing some research, they learned about vertical gardens and how they can allow people to utilize the space available in urban environments more efficiently and economically. In addition, they can help improve air quality in congested areas, as well as provide food, aesthetic value, and energy savings. They decided that they wanted to experiment with different designs for these gardens using recycled, or reclaimed materials and create one as a demonstration for their garden class at school.

This process led them to create a small vertical garden which demonstrated how to place plants with higher water requirements on top and plants that need less water below. The lower plants can survive on what drips out of the holes from the ones watered on top. They presented their hands-on experiment in water conservation and horticulture to the students in the garden club and talked about the benefits of vertical gardening.

Campus Mural and Garden

2018, Sacramento, California, USA

Jesha Morgan, Jackson Mossman, Emma Lotter, and Dominic Wing, students at George Washington Carver School of Arts and Sciences, combined their passions for art and gardening in their Caring for Our Watersheds project.

Campus Mural

In an effort to communicate an environmental message, beautify their campus, and demonstrate water-wise planting, this group completed a project that included painting a large water- and nature-themed mural and planting a small California native species garden in an adjacent area. They hope to awaken a sense of environmental consciousness in the student body as they see and interact with the art and garden.

PERMEABLE PAVERS IMPLEMENTATION

2018, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES
Pavers
At Walnut Hills High School, thousands of students walk across campus seven hours a day, 5 days a week. Because of this, during rainy conditions, it is very common to find soil and litter running into sidewalks and parking lots and clogging drains in multiple locations. To address the ongoing erosion issue, a project was proposed to use permeable pavers to limit erosion, sustain plant life, and lessen water runoff that leads to pollution. Patrick Carroll and Spencer Jones selected to implement permeable pavers because they are a realistic and financially reasonable solution to the environmental problem of soil erosion and water runoff. They allow rain and melting snow to go into the ground, reducing runoff and lessening the amount of pollutants that go into sewers.

Since the project occurs on a Cincinnati Public School property, the team members met with the AP Environmental Science teacher, principal, and alumni director of Walnut Hills High school. The team made a formal presentation, discussing the negative environmental impacts of not using permeable pavers at Walnut Hills High School. With the funds in place and a positive impact on the school, the administrators indicated that the school was supportive, and the alumni department was positive about the project. However, the team was notified that the Cincinnati School Board would have to approve a project of this kind before implementation.. The team expects that Cincinnati Public School will approve the project and implementation will move forward in the near future. Patrick and Spencer are aware that they chose an ambitious project but believe it will make an important ecological impact at Walnut Hills High School. In addition, the completed project can encourage other schools to make similar changes to help the local watershed.
Pavers

WOMEN FOR THE WATERSHED

2018, CINCINNATI, OH, USA
Women for Watershed
Ashley Yeoman and Kassidi Puthoff designed the Women for the Watershed week at their high school, Mount Notre Dame. Their project was designed to educate young high school women about the local Ohio watersheds and to spread awareness about what they, in turn, can do to help protect them. Ashley and Kassidi designed a week-long awareness event, during which students learned about water cleanliness, water preservation, recycling, littering, the harmful impacts of plastic and other toxins, and many other environmental protection topics.

Each day of the week, Ashley and Kassidi had a different activity or environmental announcement for students during homeroom. To kick off Monday, students watched a short, engaging video about the watershed – what it is, how humans cause harm to it, and what steps can be taken to protect it. Then, on Wednesday, there was a school-wide competition, during which students applied the information from Monday’s video to complete a homeroom quiz, or “hodge podge”. Each girl in the winning homeroom received a S’well stainless steel water bottle. Ashley and Kassidi chose stainless steel water bottles due to their positive environmental impacts. In the United States, the average person drinks about 170 plastic water bottles per year. Multiply this number by 24 girls, and in one year, one MND homeroom is using over 4,000 plastic water bottles. If these girls continue using the water bottles in years to come, imagine the number of plastic bottles that will be prevented from harming the earth.

Ashley and Kassidi also had a recycling poster contest at school. There are several recycling bins in the school cafeteria, but no signage reminding and encouraging students to recycle. So, students could design and submit recycling posters into the contest. We will copy and laminate the winning design and hang these posters around the cafeteria to encourage and remind people to recycle their soda cans, water bottles, and other recyclable materials.

GOT SOLE?

2018, CINCINNATI, OH, USA
Got Sole
Paige and Aliyah carried out their project within Mount Notre Dame High School. They decided to hold a used tennis-shoe drive and work together with Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe Program to help create new playgrounds for kids around the community. With the help of their mentor, they created several posters advertising the details of the shoe drive and hung them up around school. In addition, they also sent out and electronic school-wide post and made an announcement during the school day. They used Chick-fil-A meals as an incentive to get people to participate. Anyone who brought in three or more pairs of tennis shoes was rewarded with a meal of their choice.

The shoe drive immediately got a lot of buzz from the students. With awards like Chick-fil-A and points towards a potential day off school, the girls had no trouble getting people to participate. After only the first day, the juniors had collectively brought in over 30 pairs of shoes and were winning the competition. By the end of the drive, the seniors ended up getting the win with 56 total pairs of shoes.

At the end of each day, Paige and Aliyah counted up the shoes in the bins, recorded the amount, and loaded the shoes into Aliyah’s car. Once her trunk was full, she made a trip down to the Rookwood Nike store and dropped off all the shoes. The employees there were super nice and grateful for all the hard work Paige and Aliyah did. They got so many pairs of shoes, they ended up having to take two trips to the Nike store!

HELPING THE LOCAL ROSELAWN COMMUNITY

2018, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES

Maegan, Annah, and Lydia took action to help their local watershed by catching rainwater and creating a drip irrigation system that will nourish a garden. Their focus is to help the New Prospect Baptist Church in Roselawn, OH. Their plan is to help them utilize rainwater and turn it into a fresh garden for the people of the community. The drip irrigation system they put in place will accommodate five-100 ft beds and it will grow yummy fruits veggies to promote health and good environmental habits. They feel this is something they can do to extensively help the watershed and community.

On April 7 2018, the girls and their families and friends woke up early to go to the church to complete their project. With all the family and friends there were many volunteers that came and helped them. First, a videographer from the Watershed project asked the girls questions about the project. They filmed Annah and Lydia as they participated in the ripple challenge around the world. After filming, they laid out the hundreds of feet of tubing across the garden. They carefully poked holes spaced 3 feet apart. Finally, they inserted pipes for the water to flow so the crops could receive water. These steps are key to a successful drip irrigation system.

The purpose of this project is to use resources already available but not in its current form for the community. By building the drip irrigation system Annah, Lydia, and Maegan were able to save money on the water that would have had to be used to water the gardens at the Roselawn church. This is because the water is being supplied from rainfall and will be dispersed into the gardens on a timed system. They have high hopes that this new system will provide fresh foods to the people in Roselawn. This will have a long lasting impact on the community because of the food desert they live in. Going forward, the fresh fruits and vegetables grown through the use of the drip irrigation system will supplement the diets of those living in the area creating a healthier community.

SAVING THE WORLD ONE LIGHT BULB AT A TIME

2018, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES

Light Bulb

Luke Erny, Kayla Roeske, and Canton Hausfeld’s idea was to decrease the amount of energy used,and wasted, from lightbulbs in their community. For their project, they gave out new, energy efficient light bulbs to community members in exchange for old incandescent bulbs. This event took place at the Wyoming Civic Center on April 15th. This exchange gave the citizens of Wyoming the opportunity to trade their old light bulbs at no cost. These light bulbs would save them money and more importantly reduce the amount of energy used. Flyers were handed out with the lightbulbs to explain the project and why making the switch to energy efficient bulbs helps the environment and is better than incandescent bulbs.

The energy efficient light bulbs that the group implemented in homes around their community were GE Daylight LED bulbs. They were general purpose, so citizens could use them in as many ways as possible. They were a 60 watt replacement that used only 10 watts in return. These bulbs were predicted to last around 13 years. They save $83 in energy cost vs. a 60 Watt incandescent A19 bulb over the bulb’s life. With this in mind, and because we gave out all 300 light bulbs, our group has saved $24,900 worth of energy overall. The estimated energy cost of a single bulb is $1.20 per year. The annual cost of all these light bulbs would be only $360. This saves people time, energy, and money using the LED energy efficient bulbs rather than regular incandescent.

LED energy efficient light bulbs are better for the environment because they use less energy than regular bulbs which in the end means less pollution is produced. Less energy use reduces the demand from power plants and decreases greenhouse gas emissions. Most power plants burn coal, crude oil, and fossil fuels which is inexpensive, but gives off harmful byproducts like carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides. These bulbs also produce less heat, so cooling your house will cost less. Energy efficient light bulbs last longer than incandescent light bulbs, so you don’t have to buy new ones as often and you aren’t throwing away as many bulbs. 60 pounds of incandescent bulbs were collected from the exchange event and were taken to a recycling center where they were disposed of properly.

RECHARGING OUR WATERSHED

2018, CINCINNATI, OH, UNITED STATES

Since the production of electricity is harmful to the environment, it is crucial to try to reduce the amount of electricity humans use. Using the knowledge that electrically charged cell phones are an increasingly part of teenager’s lives, seniors Victoria Wilhelmy and Olivia Hartman and juniors Mia Semler and Tara Franke created an eco-friendly alternative to regular phone charging that could be implemented in their own school, The Summit Country Day.

Their solution to this energy-consuming phone dilemma was to create two public phone charging stations that run completely off solar energy. These two stations are located in sunny, popular areas of their four-story school building. Each station consists of three solar powered phone chargers that stick onto the windows. Accordingly, with each charger are cables designed to charge a variety of phones. Along with the actual chargers is a sign that explains to students not only what the stations are, but also what the environmental effects of using these chargers are. Consequently, students are able to benefit from the phone charger and become more environmentally conscious.

The actual process of making the stations was very simple. After ordering all the materials online and having them shipped to the school, the final step was just sticking the chargers to the windows and putting up the sign that explained to students what they were. This easy solution just shows how simple it can be to help the environment.

Victoria, Olivia, Mia, and Tara are all excited and proud that their eco-friendly alternative will benefit not only the future generations of high schoolers that come through the halls of the Summit, but also the quality of the environment in the future. As long as solar energy, a renewable source, is available, so are their chargers.

Recharging