Keirith Snyder was awarded a one-year Space Grant Fellowship, co-sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth (ISPE).

Keirith described here Space Grant outreach project as follows:
I am currently working on A Ph.D. in Renewable Natural Resource. My investigations focus on the water-use relations of tree species and the link between hydrology and vegetation. Currently I work in riparian ecosystems on the upper San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona. My outreach program targets high school students in an outreach effort to increase their understanding hydrologic cycles, watershed processes, and to learn how multidisciplinary research is being done.

As a teaching assistant and as a student, I have seen the positive experience that field trips and exposure to on-going projects has on student interest and class participation. Therefore, I have established an interactive science field trip for students to a cooperative research project on the San Pedro River.

Resident of Arizona live in Semi-arid systems and find themselves facing many environmental issues related to the management of these systems and precious water resources. Multiple-use conflict over water allocation and groundwater pumping are constantly in the public eye. There is also increasing concern with protecting the fragile riparian gallery forests that provide structurally diverse vegetation for wildlife. My outreach program focuses on understanding how scientific information is collected about these systems in order to elucidate how management and global change may affect the productivity and sustainabilityof these ecosystems. This outreach program will target understanding the hydrologic cycle, basin water budget, and ecology of plant communities within riparian ecosystems.

The field trip site (Lewis Springs) is a semi-arid riparian ecosystem along the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona and is part of the Semi-Arid Land Surface-Atmosphere Program (SALSA). SALSA is an interdisciplinary science program created by the USDA Agricultural Research Service (Tucson, AZ) involving 40 scientists. The objective is to investigate the natural and human induced impacts on the basin-wide water balance and ecological processes of the Upper San Pedro River Basin.

My outreach program begins with an informal discussion on site, where students are exposed to the hydrologic cycle, issues surrounding water management, and possible scenarios of global climate change. Emphasis will be placed on understanding how scientific progress is made (i.e. using the scientific method and observations to determine process). Aerial and remotely sensed imagery of the area are shown and the objectives of the SALSA project are explained. The next few stops emphasize hands on involvement where students use instruments to measure the climate, stream flow, soil conditions, and groundwater levels. This experience is to provide with them with a enhanced understanding of the components of the hydrologic cycle, by actually measuring them.

The next segment of the field trip at the Lewis Springs site is a hands-on involvement with the vegetation component of riparian ecosystems. Students will become familiar with the unique vegetation of these areas in contrast with the surrounding upland areas. Then species in different habitats are selected by the students to measure leaf water potential to determine which plants have to tolerate lower levels of water availability.

To finish up the day students walk to the top of hill to view the surrounding basin and discuss the possible impacts of different types of land use will have on the hydrology and of the watershed and the riparian ecosystem. In this basin, stark differences in land uses (e.g. grazing, agriculture) are visible in the aboveground imagery, and will be integrated into the discussion. Students will hopefully take back an increased understanding of the hydrologic cycle, components of the basin water balance, and an idea of how scientists measure these variables, and how these variables affect plant communities.

Visiting this site provides students with an interactive learning experience at an operational research site. This project incorporates many scientists of different disciplines and will provide students with a multi-faceted exposure to global change research and basin-scale watershed management. To assess the effectiveness of this outreach program the teachers pass out a short writing assignments asking students what they learned, and how they see the role of science in managing natural resources. I also ask for teacher feedback on the program, so I can incorporate changes into the curriculum as needed.