Young seeds

Josue Benavides

               Saving the environment isn’t only up to present generations, but also future generations. A study was conducted seeing if elementary school children are able to do their part in contributing to environmental research as citizen scientists. These young scientists were taught how to measure seed vegetation alongside scientists in their school yards. With the scientists these young children were able to do tasks such as estimating vegetation seed coverage, measuring heights of vegetation, and counting seeds during a removal of seeds experiment. Although the young children had similar results in data collected they did struggle in measuring height and collecting estimates was difficult for them as they had no prior experience. The children showed a significant difference of data in comparison to scientists in the part of the experiment that came to collecting T. pratense seeds in sequential groups. The counting of these seeds required for the children to pay close attention. As the children were not able to focus as the scientists did this led to under or over counting of the seeds. If future generations are able to learn about seed vegetation at an early age this will aid ordinary citizens doing their part to save the environment.

 

Figure 1( Garrison elementary planting)

References

Miczajka, L. V., Klein, M. A., and G. Pufal. 2015. Elementary School Children Contribute to Environmental Research as Citizen Scientists. PLOS ONE 10 (11).

Trees, C. (n.d.). School Planting: Garrison Elementary School. Retrieved October 29, 2016, from http://caseytrees.org/event/school-planting-garrison-elementary-school/