News - United States of America
Students Collected GLOBE Data at Earth Heart Farms in October
Contributed by Janet Struble, GLOBE Partner at University of Toledo / GLOBE Mission Earth
Over 170 students and 12 teachers from four local school districts visited Earth Heart Farms in Ottawa County, Ohio, during the week of 10 October 2022. Students attended from Perkins High School in Sandusky, Immaculate Conception School in Port Clinton, and Aerospace & Natural Sciences Academy of Toledo and Toledo Early College, both with Toledo Public Schools. The students took measurements, explored science foundational concepts, and shaped their new knowledge of biology and the Farm to look at the whole system, including aspects like what contributes to the formation of significant harmful algal blooms in the western basin of Lake Erie.
Participants visited eight stations with the grassland as backdrop. GLOBE Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, and Pedosphere stations offered students hands-on field data collection that will be used as a baseline to compare future spring data collection. Other stations were hosted by The Nature Conservancy, Black Swamp Bird Observatory, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Green Creek Wildlife Society, and Musical Linguistics. The students will come back to Earth Heart Farms in the spring to collect GLOBE observations and compare them with data collected this fall.
Earth Heart Farms is on 80 acres of farmland located in Ottawa County, Ohio, on the Little Portage River in the Lake Erie Basin. The land was taken out of agricultural production years ago and restored to a native grassland through the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program.
The Earth Heart Farms program launched in August and is funded by the Ohio EPA’s Ohio Environmental Education Fund and University of Toledo’s GLOBE Mission Earth NASA grant.
