Environmental Science Field School 2022
The Environmental Science Field School course (ENVS 2523) was back in person this year with a full class of 23 students engaged in 10 days of hands-on learning exercises. Daily exercises were instructed by professors from many departments at Acadia as well as government scientists.
Topics included: GPS and geological map-making, field sampling and lab analysis quality assurance, saltmarsh ecology, coastal squeeze, pollution tracking, plant ecology, iNaturalist logging, forest ecology, invertebrate sampling and identification, and bird dissection for microplastics pollution. Alumni can also participate by helping to identify iNaturalist observations searching under the ENVS2523 project.
A few rainy days in the first week were followed by sunny weather for many of the field exercises. Students noted their appreciation of the outside education in many of the evaluation comments including:
“I loved being outdoors all the time and having so many different teachers and subjects. I feel like it made every day exciting and I learned a lot from so many people!”
“The hands-on field stuff was my favourite part because I felt like I was actually seeing the stuff I was learning about instead of just being told about it.”
Here are a few pictures from some of the exercises.
