The goal of the ISLS Academy is to inspire students to both study science in college and to pursue careers in teaching science in high school. We believe the best way to do this is to provide students with mentors who model for them the way in which they do science in the real world. Our approach requires high school students to work in learning communities with high school teachers, undergraduate students and university professors as they themselves help to craft a science curriculum that incorporates science standards into real world investigations designed and carried out by high school student peers. Because of Ohio's preeminent role in developing biomonitoring protocols for investigating rivers and wetlands, we have incorporated the use of these protocols into the Academy as a way to demonstrate that high school classes can serve the role of both teaching science and providing real data that can then be used to improve local environments. Below are links to a general background on biomonitoring, and to each of the learning modules developed by the ten learning communities.
Biomonitoring Starts With You
The science of biomonitoring is based on the field of autecology, which examines the relationship between individual organisms and their environments. The major concept upon which autecology is built is that of adaptation - the match of organisms to their environments brought about by natural selection. The theory states that stresses in the environment act upon organismal features (morphological [those related to form], physiological [those related to function] or behavioral) resulting in adaptations, saving organisms energy for increased reproductive success.
The more severe the stress of the environment the more likely we are to see the adaptations displayed by organisms for survival. Some organisms display a wide range of tolerance to environmental change, and hence are found under a wide diversity of environmental conditions. Other organisms are highly adapted to specific environmental conditions, and hence are intolerant even to small environmental changes. In both types of organisms, tolerant or intolerant, the health of the organism may be an indication of a stress in the environment. Intolerant organisms are unable to survive environmental change and therefore die in response to even small environmental changes. In the science of biomonitoring, the absence of organisms from environments where we would expect to find them leads us to conclude that environmental degradation is the reason. Therefore, animals and plants can act as indicators of the health of the environment. But in order to draw this conclusion we must first learn about the tolerances and adaptations of organisms. We have to be good ecologists to make the connection between the distribution and abundance of organisms and the state of the environment.