AFS is becoming an arboretum! With the help of three grants, we've raised money to inventory and tag 300 trees on our campus and on the Abington Meeting property. Kevin Weber, from Bartlett Tree Experts, is spending this week creating a database of the trees that will record the genus and species, the location of the trees, GPS coordinates, age, health, and whether the tree is significant in some way. Lower and Middle School students have been learning about the process from Kevin. Middle School students, under the direction of Mark Smith, will be learning how to be "Tree Tenders" and will be helping to take care of the trees on the campus. Last year, nine faculty members and members of the Meeting became certified Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Tree Tenders so that we could create this program for the students and become better stewards of our beautiful campus. The students will also be working with John Rison to create a web-based "tree trail" so that members of the wider community can learn about our trees as well.
Kevin explains how to use the GPS to the 2nd grade students.
"Diameter at Breast Height", or DBH, is how you measure the width of the tree.
There are so many acorns from different kinds of oak trees!
Tree number 23! We had a lot of fun trying to follow the trees in order!
Finding a REALLY interesting acorn.
The students show Mindy all of the tree seeds they have collected.
Middle School students learned a lot today as well.
Kevin points out a Tulip Poplar that is over 100 feet high!
3rd Grade students learn about Global Positioning Systems and see how many satellites are overhead.
No comments:
Post a Comment