Trying to create an experience teen-agers will remember, West Perry science teacher Fred Neely has been taking his students to Little Buffalo State Park for the past 15 years to muck around in the creek and check on the health of the ecosystem
Trying to create an experience teen-agers will remember, West Perry science teacher Fred Neely has been taking his students to Little Buffalo State Park for the past 15 years to muck around in the creek and check on the health of the ecosystem.
“How healthy is this ecosystem?” asked Christi Hadden, manager of the Susquehanna Watershed Education Program. She, working with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, helps students measure the levels of pollutants in the creek by cataloging the creatures living there.
Students enter the creek, stir up the water and collect macroinvertebrates. Some are more tolerant to pollution, others are more delicate and cannot tolerate polluted water.
Students found out that the creek is pretty healthy.
“This is something they’ll remember,” said Neely. He said the students respond so positively to the program because they know they’re contributing to the data. Neely said the results are sent to Dickinson College.
Getting out of the classroom and often waist deep into the environment gives students a better view of their ecosystem. “They have something concrete to look at when they are maintaining the environment,” he said.
The students, all in canoes, continue down the creek and head into Holman Lake where they test the water’s health by measuring, among other things, dissolved oxygen, PH and nitrates.