Day 1- Liberty Lake

DAY 1 

Liberty Lake Beaver Dam and Stream Conservation 

Liberty Lake Regional Park is an excellent site to observe some of the abundant natural resources we have available in Eastern Washington. At the park, trees of all different maturity levels are present, creating an hospitable ecosystem to many species. When I visited the park with a group of 5th graders, the park hosts were very informative and helpful to explain the importance of allowing the forest to grow naturally and how humans can help to not inhibit its growth.

In the image below you can trees at many different stages of life:

 The area is home to moose, coyotes, rabbit, ducks, raccoons, deer, and beavers. The beavers play a crucial role in how the streams and rivers flow in the park. One thing that I learned about beavers during the field trip was that they instinctively build the dam to limit the sound of rushing water through the area. Creating the dam, however, has a multitude of benefits for the beavers. By storing up water behind the dam, they are able to create a deep, slow-moving area of water to live in and create their lodge. They build a lodge that has an entrance underwater to protect their home from predators. I was surprised to hear that they can hold their breath for up to 15 minutes! 

The image below shows students overlooking a vacant beaver lodge:

The water above the dam is about 2-3 feet higher than the water below. At this particular location, the beaver family that had been living there for several years disappeared, the park guide suspected that they had been poached. Below is an image of a beaver skull, it was cool for the kids to feel the strong teeth: 

Learning about animals' habitats and ways of life allows students to gain a greater perspective on how ecosystems support life. Giving students a tangible resource, like a field trip, allows them to better understand how human environmental impact can directly affect our local and global environment. A better extension to this field trip would have been for students to return to school and do more research on habitats and ecosystems. This trip would be an excellent 'engage" lesson to further develop in a following exploration. Next Gen Science standards that could have easily been met with this field trip are 

LS2.A: Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems: Having students explore how each species is dependent upon another would be easy to do in a setting such as Liberty Lake park.
and
LS2.B: Cycles of Matter and Energy Transfer in Ecosystems: While on the tour, we saw a handful of dead animals. This spurred a discussion on decomposers. This is a great platform for teaching about trophic levels and cycles of matter. 

This field trip is one I would definitely take my students on in the future, but I would want to tie in a lesson to further develop their conceptual understanding of environmental impact and local ecosystems.

Objective 1- alignment with standards: These field trips and activities could easily be transformed to fit the above standards and also to meet standards which discuss environmental stability and natural resources. The Next Generation Science Standard ESS3.C: Human Impacts on Earth Systems addresses the need for students to understand just how severe of an impact humans have on local biomes as well as the biosphere's environment as a whole. Teaching students about human impact in a local ecosystem where the trees are right in front of them and animals habitats are evident would be much more applicable than when sitting in a classroom.