Soil Biology and Ecology

Michael J. Ghia (mghia@moose.uvm.edu)
Mon, 2 Jan 1995 17:55:09 -0500 (EST)

Does anyone have any experience with or knowledge of engaging activities
that can be carried out by college students (or high school students) to
educate them about soil biology and ecology as part of an introductory
soil science course?
I tried to add two ecology/biology labs (one outside/one inside) to our
intro soils course here at the University of Vermont this year with only
partial success--Most students felt that they learned something but, not
a great deal more than they learned in lecture. Also, there were some
parts that were really engaging and other parts where we really put them
to sleep: They liked picking through a forest O and A layer looking
for insects, fungi, and invertebrates (But, I think that we got really
lucky this year that we didn't have our usally hard freezes in September);
They liked the soil-borne disease
displays; They liked seeing nodules on alfalfa; They liked seeing the
nematodes under a microscope; But they were bored to
death with the hardcore microbiology (petri dishes--I.D.ing and counting
colonies, comparing a forest site, an abandoned pasture, a compost pile,
a tilled site, and a sprayed orchard); They were frustrated by our lack
of insects from the (heptane)extracts we made from field samples, and
that we did not have a useable key (or the personal expertise to ID most
of the one's that we did find. And,
they really weren't impressed by the CO2/soil respiration demonstration
using Dreger Tubes.
We have a 3 and a half hour time/once per week time constraint,
but would be willing to consider anything which we might be able to
adapt. There are between 15 and 25 students in each lab and a total of
between 60-80 students per semester (Fall only), so we need to be
economical as far as supplies, and we also would prefer activities that
allow each student (or groups of 3 people) to actually physically do
something. But again, we
can consider anything that might be modified to meet our needs.

Thanks again, Mike mghia@moose.uvm.edu