Climate Change in the School Yard: Monitoring the Health of Acer Saccharum with A Maple Report Card

K-12 Teachers and students engage in authentic science and a research partnership with scientists in Maple Watch, a University of New Hampshire outreach program. Maple Watch is a hands-on, inquiry-based program in which students learn about climate change and air quality as well as many other environmental stress factors which may affect the health of sugar maple. The iconic New England tree is slated to lose 52% of its range in this century. Maple Watch builds on the 20-year record of Forest Watch, a K-12 program in which students and teachers have contributed annual research specimens and data to a UNH study of tropospheric ozone and its impact on white pine (Pinus strobus). Maple Watch students monitor sugar maples (Acer saccharum) year-round for signals of strain and disease. Students report the first run in sap season, bud burst and leaf development, and leaf senescence and fall. Across New England the timing of these phenologic events is changing with climate warming. Students assess maple health with simple measures of leaf development in May, leaf senescence in early fall and bud quality in late fall. Simple student arithmetic rankings of leaf and bud health correlate with chlorophyll content and spectral reflectance measures that students can analyze and compare with researchers at UNH. Grading their trees for each test on a one-two-three scale, students develop a Maple Report Card for each type of measurement, which presents an annual portrait of tree health. Year-by-year, schools across the sugar maple's 31 million acre range could monitor changes in tree health. The change over time in maple health can be graphed in parallel with the Goddard Space Institute's Common Sense Climate Index. Four teachers, listed as co-authors here, began a pilot study with Maple Watch in 2010, contributing sap samples and sharing curricular activities with UNH. Pilot Maple Watch schools already manage stands of sugar maples and make maple syrup and are assisting in training new schools in Maple Watch protocols. The program also includes assessment of educational philosophy as we consider how to discuss climate change with K-12 students. Maple Watch teachers are learning how to discuss the death of a tree, extirpation of a species, and human connections with nature.