Morehead State University’s Environmental Education Center with funding from EQT Foundation has provided hands-on ecology field trips for Middle and High Schools students in Carter, Rowan, Johnson, and Floyd counties.  The field trips were contacted at Yatesville Lake Wildlife Management Area and EQT's wetland mitigation site.
 
The purposes of the field trips were to provide hands on, place-based learning opportunity for students. While on the field trip student are gather data on each ecosystem.  The concepts learned on the field trip are diversity of plants and animals, climates, niches, succession, soil types, and food webs.

Each students recorded abundance and type of birds, insect, plant and other animals found at the three ecosystems into a field notebook. They recorded air and soil temperature, soil characteristics, wind speed, soil moisture.  In addition, they collected soil samples, aquatic and land insects, amphibians (i.e. salamanders), and biomass to calculate productivity.  The student data collected and observations will be compared in the school room as part of the science content.

Assisting with the field trip were the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, and MSU graduate and undergraduate students in the Institute for Regional Analysis and Public Policy and Biology programs.

For more information about the field trips contact April Haight, Director of Environmental Education Center, at (606) 783-2455 or a.haight@moreheadstate.edu.  More information about the center can also be found at http://eec.moreheadstate.edu.