Long-term ecological research at an undergraduate college: Student participation in monitoring and assessing ecosystem change

Background/Question/Methods Since 1998, the spring Ecological Principles Lab at Richard Stockton College has been based primarily on student participation in a series of long-term ecological studies on the Stockton Campus. One of these, an assessment of the tree stratum of the pinelands forest in relation to soils and landuse, has continued for the entire decade. Several others have continued for over five years. A project on the recovery of flora and soil fauna following construction of a powerline right of way is in its fourth year. A new study of cynipid gall wasps and scale insects on Quercus spp. began in 2007.
Students have been assigned to work in teams, which prepare the research proposal for each year, using the reports of previous years’ groups as well as their own preliminary investigations of the research questions and sites. Each year, the results are edited and “published” in an online journal Stocktonia. Research methods are based on simple plant or animal sampling techniques and field chemical measurement, but GIS/GPS are an integral part of most projects. Student numbers per semester have varied from 10-20.
Results/Conclusions Assessment of the student reports shows that projects have varied in quality of data added from year to year and in the degree to which students have built on the work of their predecessors. Among the most successful projects has been a study of spring phenology of highbush blueberry, where students developed their own measurement protocols and analysis methods. This work also relates directly to the question of climate change, which provides a ready framework for students to interpret their results. Another successful project has been analysis of benthic macroinvertebrates in several streams, which ties to a larger set of data collected by Stockton and a still larger set collected by various state agencies. Again, there is a clear interpretive framework that relates the results to changing landuse and water chemistry. The tree stratum study data have proved more difficult to interpret, but in spring 2008, a student group will reanalyze all plot data accumulated since the project began over ten years ago.
An assessment conducted as part of the Environmental Studies periodic program review indicates that students retrospectively attach a high value to the experience of conducting field research and reporting their results. Students from the lab have gone on to present independent research developed from these projects at ESA and other scientific meetings.