Students in Action

Harwood Union Middle School - Community Mapping Project

Our most intensive pilot habitat monitoring project to date involves seventh grade science students at Harwood Union Middle School in Moretown, Vermont. Keeping Track Youth Program Coordinator Sean Lawson and Harwood teacher Nancy Spencer coordinated the curriculum and create an ambitious schedule to train 84 students and complete seven full days of field work over the course of the entire school year. Students engaged in both classroom and field exercises designed to meet the following goals: (1) introduce students to wildlife tracking and habitat mapping using Global Positioning Units (GPS) and Geographic Information Systems software (GIS); (2) identify and record mammal species presence and habitat features in Phenn Basin, a parcel of Camel’s Hump State Forest located in Fayston, Vermont; (3) expose students to the use of landscape and wildlife information in land-use planning and management decisions on private and public lands; and (4) have students create and present useful maps that display the data collected in the field about wildlife and their habitat.

Nancy and Sean attended a summer institute offered by the Community Mapping Program (CMP) to begin the project. CMP is a program of the Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS) funded by the Orton Family Foundation. CMP provided teacher and student training, GPS units, GIS software, technical and field support, and has posted the students’ work on their website. An exciting aspect of the project is the exposure students received to real-world planning and decision making using maps, with presentations by community leaders in conservation and land-use planning. The students’ work was featured on local cable TV and is displayed in a number of GIS maps and web pages which can be viewed at www.communitymap.org and www.harwood.org.

Audubon Take P.A.R.T

Student led wildlife research and habitat inventory

In collaboration with Audubon Vermont, Keeping Track has led a successful summer Take P.A.R.T. (Program of Audubon Research for Teens). The "Large Mammal Tracking and Habitat Mapping" project gathered valuable information about wildlife presence and habitat use in the Nulhegan Basin and West Mountain wildlife management areas of Vermont’s ‘Northeast Kingdom’. The six high school students on the team created informative GIS maps using their data, with help from Ned Swanberg from the Community Mapping Program, and culminated the effort by presenting findings to local residents. Silvio Conte National Wildlife Refuge manager, Keith Weaver, expressed a keen interest in the team’s data and looks forward to supporting our work in future years. Weaver said that not only is the data of value to the refuge managers, but that the project provides an outstanding environmental education opportunity. Visit www.communitymap.org to view the maps and photos from this program.