Monitoring
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🦸♀️️🦸♂️️ Above students focus on the regeneration of their school forest after a harvest took place. These students focus on one individual tree with a PVC square foot approach.
Monitoring an area over time may support objectives in direct resource stewardship or add value in communication efforts. Often times, it is a tool used by community partners to understand if a restoration or stewardship effort is successful.
Note: if you have historical data, building time in to review that data before a field experience may help students compare conditions they are evaluating. We will be exploring data analysis in the classroom more in Week 5!
Read the short descriptions below each broad category and if you're interested in a specific tool for the category, we're providing some ideas and tips for use in PBSE efforts. Most PBSE focuses will benefit from incorporating monitoring - how might it fit in with your project design or be an added value for students' learning or stewardship?
Data Quality Reminders
Photo/Video Monitoring
Using photos or video to monitor a site can help with the long-term (beyond a single school year) tracking of a project's success or as the primary purpose of a project if students are focused on reporting any changes of a specific site element to a community partner or state/national database.
Trail cameras can help capture wildlife or human use of any projects students have completed or as a way to further refine a project need if a potential biodiversity issue has been noted.
Photo point monitoring entails establishing or following protocol on how pictures taken from a specific location in a certain way will help alert to any changes over time or show success in some type of projects.
Run into technology access or budget issues to utilize these? Reach out to community partners for support!
Trail Cameras
🛑Only click the arrow to the right if you want to use this type of tool! Optional ideas and tips below. 📚
📚 Using trail cameras can help when an effort has a wildlife focus - catching those with groups of students in the field is a challenge! - or a human use element that is difficult to track in a single field day. Examples of efforts this might be useful for include:
Habitat improvements that students are implementing or determining might be needed - from flying insects use of a garden to deer browse at a tree planting site, trail cameras will help your students have further evidence to make decisions based on; and
Human recreation uses and understanding how any communications or site improvements made add value or correct a problem - similar to wildlife, being able to see the use out of school hours or field experience times can be valuable to making action decisions or determining the success of an effort.
📚 Tips/Resources for Trail Cameras
Take the time to fully identify the need for data collected via a trail camera to then determine which of the myriad of cameras available will best fit your students/effort needs. Ask yourself questions like - do we need to something that can stay up all year? how will we get the data off the camera - is it easy to get to the location it may be placed or will a camera that can store data for a longer period of time be needed? does the camera need to record constantly or just when motion is detected?.
This publication and protocol includes potential uses and tips on managing the data you obtain via trail cameras. Noting that some of the specific technology referenced may be outdated.
This robust curriculum guide can help you plan for classroom and field aspects of incorporating a trail camera(s) into your PBSE effort. It is specific to Minnesota but all supplies and types of support can be reached via your community partners here in Michigan.
Photo Points
🛑Only click the arrow to the right if you want to use this type of tool! Optional ideas and tips below. 📚
📚 Establish and using photo point monitoring can help when your effort is focused on invasive species, plant disease or climate change impacts. This can also be a great way to include community members in students data analysis by submitting their photos to students for examination. Examples of efforts this might be useful for include:
Examining any changes over time following a major habitat modification (ex. timber harvest, new trail/outdoor space, or river flow change due to dams); and
Efforts focused on climate change communication - photo evidence may be a powerful tool for students to draw on.
📚 Tips/Resources for Photo Monitoring
These short guides(USFS; USDA-NRCS) will help to establish objectives, protocol for photo taking and storing photos.
This guide focuses on the educator perspective for using technology as part of field investigations to monitor changes over time.
Check out these tips from Michigan DNR on best practices for establishing and conducting photo monitoring on state land.
Adopting An Individual Element or Small Area
Whether within a season, school year or over multiple years, monitoring change over time of a large area is difficult. Narrowing your focus to an individual element or plot may provide enough information - whether based on grade-appropriateness or project needs - to move your effort forward.
Adopting an individual element may be useful for elementary aged students, if your effort focuses heavily on a specific plant species, or you are spending time in the field for short periods of time regularly.
Monitoring a plot of any size may be useful with field time or grade level constraints and the data can easily be extrapolated to your whole field site.
For both of these monitoring areas, asking your community partners for input or best practices is a great way to ensure success for both student and community partner purposes.
Adopting an Individual Element
🛑Only click the arrow to the right if you want to use this type of tool! Optional ideas and tips below. 📚
📚 Adopting an individual element may be the right approach for you if your students are younger, the project is focused on a specific species among several present, or for elements you can visit/examine regularly (weekly to monthly). Examples of efforts this might be useful for include:
School forest or public park stewardship and monitoring - be sure to reference any management/stewardship plans in place that may direct you to focus on specific signs of disease or other issue;
Schoolyard habitats - consider breaking students into small groups to deeply monitor a specific species in a garden or the progression of an invasive species present on the campus; or
A specific biotic/abiotic water quality indicator that particularly impacts aquatic species the PBSE effort supports.
📚 Tips/Resources for Adopting an Individual Element
Work with a community partner to understand what type of information is most useful - in some cases it may be size of a plant or the time it blooms; in others it may be the rate of erosion at a water-based site.
Determine how you'll maintain this information over time in your classroom, ask yourself questions like: will students keep physical data sheets/journals or collect data that is input electronically somewhere? does the information need to make it to community partners as raw data or will students take their observations/measurements and report out to partners? if you need to maintain year to year, what works best for your district's digital storage system or what elements of a handwritten record are helpful to maintain over time? how will you do that?.
Below are two adopt-a-tree protocols that can be modified for other plant types or combined to make your perfect adopt-a-tree process.
Page 15 of this document includes outdoor and in-classroom approaches at the kindergarten level;
The Adopt a Tree Activities link on this page has several suggestions for types of data collection (targeted K-8) and this page includes the overall approach to this. If you'd like the full Project Learning Tree directions for this activity, reach out to the facilitator team for more information.
Monitoring a Plot
🛑Only click the arrow to the right if you want to use this type of tool! Optional ideas and tips below. 📚
📚 Focusing on a plot area can help when you have a large field site, need to split students into groups for field experience logistics, or when you need a full set of information that can't be collected for an entire area in the time you have for the field. Data collected in a plot area (from 1 square foot or meter to a 10 foot diameter circular area) can be extrapolated by students or partners to determine needs, inform stewardship action decisions, or show success of an effort.
📚 Tips/Resources for Monitoring a Plot
If you're monitoring a specific area over time, consider how you can leave plot boundaries up or indicate the plot center for quicker set up each visit.
With younger students, using hula hoops or squares made with PVC to establish a small plot may be the best approach. Consider using pin flags or stakes to leave a mark of the center point and bring your hula hoop/PVC square in from the field after each data collection period.
These three resources provide overviews on setting up study plots with middle and high school students (primarily in wooded areas but can be modified for any area or size): National Geographic as part of their BioBlitz resources; the Cary Institute outlines protocol for some more complex data around carbon storage and basal area; this program outline from Maine focuses on plant growth.
These two data sheets have been developed for school forests at the high school level but may be useful in other settings or can help you brainstorm types of things students can monitor within a plot regardless of setting: General Data and Sample Plot.