GLOBE Carbon Cycle Project: Hands-on experiments in the classroom

Background/Question/Methods The GLOBE Carbon Cycle Project links an international team of scientists and educational outreach specialists with the GLOBE community. Through field exercises, computer modeling, and remote sensing, primary and secondary grade level teachers and students will gain knowledge about current carbon cycle research, develop strong analytical skills, and increase their overall environmental awareness.
The Carbon Cycle Project focuses on inducing better understanding of all aspects of the carbon cycle under present conditions and into the foreseeable future. It is carried on by an international team of scientists from the U.S. (University of New Hampshire, Dr. Scott Ollinger) and the Czech Republic (Charles University in Prague). To achieve this goal a combination of hands-on field measurements, remote sensing, ecological modeling and hands-on class experiments has been developed to estimate where carbon is stored and how it is exchanged between the Earth’s surface and the atmosphere, on scales from local to global.
The central activity is aimed on work with simple ecological mathematical models on biomass accumulation and carbon cycle developed in STELLA freeware environment. These are accompanied by simple plant growth models focusing on plant physiological processes such as carboxylation reaction in photosynthesis or influence of light quality on photosynthetic efficiency.

Results/Conclusions The GLOBE team from the Czech Republic focuses primarily on developing activities for K-12 students to highlight importance of vegetation in the global carbon cycle. We are continuously developing several sets of simple Plant-a-Plant experiments on maize plants, which should demonstrate the importance of sources and environmental factors (carbon dioxide, water, mineral nutrients, light and temperature) for plant growth and simultaneously get students acknowledged to the principles of scientific approach.
During the last 6 months The CZ GLOBE Carbon-Cycle team from CU and TEREZA association have visited nine GLOBE pilot schools participating in the Carbon Cycle Project. The main effort was given to encourage more students to participate in GLOBE activities and offer new Plant-a-Plant experiments to the teachers and discuss with them main successes and constraints they experienced. Based on discussions with teachers and students we are developing new activities focused on principle of carbon sequestration to the plant biomass which are going to be introduced to the pilot schools at the Carbon Cycle workshop in September 2009. After being tested in the classrooms both in Czech Republic and in the U.S., all these teaching materials should be available for the whole international GLOBE community.