Blog
Browse this page for blog postings related to middle- and high-school-teacher Adventure Learning workshops taking place across Idaho. Use the widgets to the right (or at bottom of this page, for smaller devices) to filter blog posts.
Climate Change
Climate change has affected many things in the area especially some wildlife. The behaviors, migration, and breeding of the local wildlife can change due to the climate change. Other issues that are arising are the insects that have migrated toward Idaho such as mosquitos carrying diseases. These type of issues are concerning as we are seeing an increase in other insect problems such as ticks and the problems they are causing.
Idaho Stakeholders
This is taken from Allie Floyd: "If you had to choose to be one of the stakeholders from the list above, who would you be and what issues would be most important to you regarding water use? How can you work together with other stakeholders to achieve your goals?" Stakeholders include: Plants/wildlife, recreationalists, farmer, Boise citizen, dam operator, or a climate scientist.
It's hard to choose a point of view, but since I've already taken on the point of view and role of a Boise Citizen, I'd like to talk about the dam operators. A few of my friends "deal in dams"... more
pollinators and plants as stakeholders?
So with all of the stakeholders involved in water rights and determining who gets what and where, we also have to concider the plants and the insects that pollinate them. Where do they come into the mix? So we just ignore them and let the chips fall where they may or do we try to help? Studies show that our pollinators like bees and butterflys are declining, In Jan of this year the United States placed the bumblebee on the endangered list for the first time. Canada placed them on the list in 2012. So what can we do? Today we visited a pollination garden at Roosevelt where students... more
Birds, Drinking water, gardens and daylighting - how else would you want to spend your day!
The history lessons we are learning are amazing! It is amazing what our pioneers figured out and created and now we are experiencing the results of their effects, sometime good and sometimes not so good - still amazing. We started out the day at the Idaho Bird Observatory - Fabiola, we need to go again this summer, we will need to check their calendar - it is done every 10 days. They had 8 nets set up and were capturing birds, checking nets every 15 to 20 minutes for approximately 5 hours. They collected data about each bird, tagged them and released them. I got to release a couple of them... more
Man vs Nature
It has been a long informative day and yet I find my list of questions has only grown.
Our first visit of the day was to a research site for the Intermountain Bird Observatory located along the Boise River. It was fascinating to watch them catch, measure, and band various bird species and to learn of what their studies have revealed so far. One positive observation is that some species of birds have been returning to the Treasure Valley earlier each year in response to climate change. This is encouraging as it means they are adapting to changes in the environment at a rate that... more
Disrupting Cycles
Climate directly influences the actions of various species, Yellow Warblers, Whitetail Deer, humans. We all depend on patterns to influence our behaviors and interactions. Yellow Warblers raise their young during the spring, the climate dictating to them when to mate, lay eggs, find food and hatch. As the climate changes in manners that are difficult to predict, we are left to adapt to new circumstances.
Heidi, from the Intermountain Bird Observatory, integrated the patterns of climate and bird cycles together by explaining the causation between rising temperature and... more