Final Congress 2007

Call for papers and presentations: All participants in Student Ecology Research projects are required to attend Final Congress on July 21, 2007 at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. Students and teachers will present their work to their peers and guests through poster and oral presentations. Because we have so few programs this year and because each program has done so much, each school may do a poster and/or power point in each of the following categories:

Category One: Aquatic Ecology

Category Two: Terrestrial Ecology

Category Three: Field Ecology Experiences

Please forward a brief abstract (NO MORE THAN 500 words) to Linda.fey@state.nm.us by July 11^th. Be sure to include title of presentation, team member names, category and format (poster or power-point). You may do both a poster and a power point on the same research topic if you choose. Posters printed on our large format printer should be designed for 48 inches wide by 36 inches high. Power-point presentations should be no more than 20 minutes, including question time.

In addition to the projects that are presented at Final Congress, we are asking for essays or other works written by our participants. These will be published with the 2007 Results of Final Congress and, if selected, will also be posted on the web.

The deadline for poster submissions* for printing on our large format printer is Tuesday July 17^th. Power point presentations will be due by 9am on July 21. Written papers based on the presentations will be accepted via email until July 25^th for publication in the Results of Student Ecology Research Program Final Congress, 2007. Please be timely in your submissions

*Instructions for using power-point program to create a poster:

Open Power-point program and select File, then Page Setup

Under Page Setup select slides sized for custom

Set the width at 48 inches

Set the height at 36 inches

Make sure orientation is landscape – this should happen automatically.

You will get a warning box saying that your paper size is too big for your printer, click OK. Design your poster as you would a power-point slide. Copy the file to a portable drive and send it back to Albuquerque with your intern by July 17^th. Please also submit photo files (either on the portable drive or burned to a disk) to be included in the “candid photo” slide show at the same time.

The Second Law

Well, I hope everyone has a chance to rest and recover from all the camping this week, I know that most of you are still in the wilderness (or just preparing to go) as I write this. While you are all out there enjoying nature, I've been in the office correcting your pre-tests. It seems that an unusually high number of you do not know the answer to question (31) "Energy inefficiency in food webs is an expected outcome of the...". An explanation should make the correct answer clear.

A. The second law of thermodynamics is often simply, and somewhat misleadingly, expressed as, "all things tend toward entropy." But what does that mean? Many people, including some scientists I know, will define entropy as disorder. Wrong. Entropy is the measure of spontaneous dispersal of energy; the heat energy that radiates into the cool (low energy) night air from the hot (high energy) campfire fire is an example of entropy. That's very different from "disorder." I prefer this well known observation as a description of the second law: Nature abhors a vacuum. Think about what this means in relation to the above question. As energy is transferred between one entity and another, it is exposed to a lower energy environment during the transfer and some of it escapes.

I hope this makes the answer more clear, if not, please feel free to respond or to email me with your questions. For your journal: What are the ways in which energy is exchanged in the systems you are studying?

What is Ecology?

I want to use this blog as a way for the students and teachers of the Student Ecology Research program to access information and ask questions. Students and teachers often have trouble relating the basic information on the pre- and post-tests to what our students are actually doing in the field. To me this indicates, first, that we need to make sure we are addressing fundamental ecological principles in our research projects and, second, that there is a need for more information on how those connections could be made. That is the purpose I hope to serve here. I will address some of those basic principles of ecology and you all should ask questions both in response to what I write here and regarding things you're seeing in the field. Please also share insights and discoveries. This is a great way for us all to interact as researchers.

Now, for the question of the day: What is Ecology?

Here is an official definition, paraphrased from several sources: Ecology is the study of the distribution and abundance of living organisms and how these factors are affected by and influence their environment including both living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic) elements that are further interacting with each other resulting in a complex system. Quite simple, isn't it?

Well, maybe we need to break it all down a little more by learning some vocabulary.

distribution -- the patterns of organism occurrence from micro- (are snails only under rocks or are they also under leaves and sticks) to global scales (why does Ashmunella carlsbadensis only live in the Guadalupe Mountains and nowhere else on earth).

abundance -- the number of individuals within a sample or area.

living organisms -- according to Sesame Street, a living thing is one that "breathes and eats and grows and that is how we know that it's alive." What does all that mean? For instance, is fire alive? It uses oxygen, eats fuel, and can grow in size. Is a virus alive? Before it highjacks a cell it neither respires nor grows. "What does it mean to be alive?" would be a good subject to explore in your journals.

biotic elements -- that's all those living organisms plus all the things that used to be alive. Remember that you and all humans are among the living organisms interacting with your ecosystem.

abiotic elements -- elements of the system that were never alive like water, climate, weather, rocks, minerals, and biogeochemical cycles. When we take temperature readings, identify our watershed or test for nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, carbon, hardness, and phosphates we are examining the abiotic elements of our environment.

ecosystem -- the classic definition is: "a natural unit consisting of all plants, animals and micro organisms in an area functioning together with all the non living physical factors of the environment." Think about what this means. Where do you draw the boundaries of the ecosystems you are studying? How do you tell when you've moved from one ecosystem to another? Are these boundaries real?

Maybe now you have more questions than answers. If that is the case then welcome to science! In many ways science is the eternal quest for more questions. Of course the thrill of discovery is important, too.

I think this is quite enough to start with. Let's mull these definitions over in relation to what we've all been doing in class.

SER 2007 is Underway

All of the 2007 SER courses have begun meeting and projects are shaping up. Our programs this summer are in Las Vegas, Carlsbad and Grants and each of our cooperating teachers has interesting research planned.

Las Vegas, our longest running program, will continue collecting data for their long-term study of the Gallinas watershed near Las Vegas, NM. Their research will be assisted by Dr. Peter Skelton of NMSU.

This will be our third year in the Carlsbad area and students will be involved in the study of micro-climate and its effects on biodiversity. As part of their project, students will place sensors that will record soil temperature every two minutes, 24 hours a day for a year. This information will be sent to ecology researcher Dr. Jason Fridley who is in the Biology Department at Syracuse University, Syracuse NY. We are pleased that our collaboration could lead to better understanding of climate change.

This is the first year we have offered a program through Grants High School. Students from grants will complete a biotic survey of two sites, one on Mt. Taylor and the other near Blue Water Lake in the Zuni Mountains. Students will survey both aquatic and terrestrial macro-invertebrates. They will also do a water quality transect of the state between the Zuni Mountains near Grants and the Pecos River near Carlsbad.

Results of all research projects will be presented at a student congress, which is modeled on a professional scientific meeting and held at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science on July 21st, 2007. Summer participants will be joined by the participants in our Spring collaboration with the Working Classroom, an after-school arts program located in downtown Albuquerque. Working Classroom students spent nine weeks studying the Bosque eco-system and interpreting their understanding through visual art. The students' pieces will be on display in the museum during the weekend of Final Congress.

Welcome to Student Ecology Research

The Student Ecology Research Program provides summer science enrichment to middle and high school students throughout New Mexico. SER is a long-standing initiative of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (NMMNH&S) in collaboration with New Mexico Math Engineering and Science Achievement, Inc. (NMMESA) By introducing teachers and students to field ecology, we have increased interest in and understanding of ecology, science, and math for over 2600 students throughout New Mexico, so far. The six-week summer high school courses sponsored by the SER engage students in field research designed to illustrate environmental issues that are important to their home communities. Students and their teachers are guided through the process of study design, data collection and analysis, and presentation of their findings at a final congress of their peers and community members. High School students who successfully complete the course are awarded one high school science credit. By guiding teachers through the process of field-based research and data collection with students during a six week summer course, and providing training and a venue that will allow communication of their increased understanding, the SER has increased environmental literacy for students and teachers throughout the state of New Mexico.