There are lessons to be learned in the streams and soil of the Adirondack Mountains, according to Dr. Michele Hluchy, chair of the Division of Environmental Studies and a professor of Geology and Environmental Studies at Alfred University.

Hluchy and colleagues from Colgate University received a nearly $1 million, four-year research grant from the National Science Foundation in 2005 to determine if the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Air Amendments of 1990 have been effective in reducing the effects of acid rain in the Adirondacks.

As an outreach component of the grant, the researchers agreed to offer summer workshops for middle school and high school teachers, providing hands-on lessons in geology, chemistry and biology that the teachers, in turn, could use with their students.

Thirteen teachers participated in this year’s session, said Hluchy, who obtained a New York State Education Department grant to augment the NSF funding for the outreach program. Because of the state funding, participation this year was limited to teachers from Hamilton, Herkimer, Jefferson, Lewis, Fulton and St. Lawrence counties.

Included were earth science, biology and chemistry teachers from high schools and general science teachers from middle schools. “Many of the participants were from very small districts where they might be the only high school science teacher,” said Hluchy, who found them “hungry for lessons they could use in their classrooms.”

Some are offering environmental science as an elective. Since it is a non-Regents course and there is no state curriculum, Hluchy said, they were “really looking for information and activities they could put into their classes.”

Hluchy and her Colgate University colleagues – Dr. Richard April, professor of Geology; Dr. Randy Fuller, professor of Biology and Environmental Studies; and Dr. Tim McCay, associate professor of Biology – took over an inn a few miles from their test area to use as the workshop headquarters. A conference room/game room was turned into a classroom and rudimentary lab.

Each evening the researchers would outline the next day’s topic, then in the morning, it would be out in the field (or stream) to learn sampling techniques and what the results might mean.

For example, the session led by Hluchy and April provided an overview of the geology and geologic history of the Adirondacks. Workshop participants dug several soil pits underneath forest cover and looked at mineralogy and chemistry, learning how to develop soil profiles and horizons. They measured soil pH (an indication of how acidic or alkaline the soil is), texture and color, and learned how acid rain affects soil chemistry, including the problems created by aluminum toxicity and cation leaching.

In streams, they took pH and alkalinity measurements at several locations and discussed the effects of stream and lake water acidification and what impact it has on the forest ecosystem.

They also sampled well water and spring water to examine how groundwater flow paths can determine if a lake will acidify, and how soil might act as a buffer to protect the lakes.

Fuller taught the second session on streams, focusing on leaf decomposition processes in acid-sensitive streams, as well as those streams with a near-neutral pH.

McCay and Matt Neatrour, who is an NSF post-doctoral fellow at Colgate, led the third session, discussing how acid deposition affects the animals and plants that live in a particular region (biota). Participants learned how to survey what animals – mammals and invertebrates – inhabit an area, and how nutrients move through members of a food web, from the invertebrates that are responsible for leaf decomposition to the small mammals that consume them and are, in turn, consumed by larger animals.

The fourth session, led by Hluchy, focused on integrating what the teachers had learned in the workshops and in the field with what they could offer in their own classrooms.

With the funding from NSF and the State Education Department grant, workshop participants received free room and board, a stipend and some equipment they used in the field and can take back into their classrooms with them.

As part of the NSF grant, Hluchy has Alfred University undergraduate students working with her both in the AU laboratories and in the field in the Adirondacks. Two of her students, Yaicha Winters and Denis Eagan, were teaching assistants for the teachers’ workshop.

Winters is a senior majoring in Environmental Studies and Geology at Alfred University. A graduate of Cambridge (NY) High School, she is a daughter of Donald and Sharon Winters of Greenwich, NY.

Eagan, a senior Environmental Studies major, is a graduate of St. Peter’s Preparatory School in Jersey City, NJ. He is a son of Thomas and Mary McParland Eagan of Maplewood, NJ.

Buoyed by the success of the first two workshops, the Alfred and Colgate research team plans to offer another workshop for teachers next summer. For more information, contact Dr. Hluchy at fhluchy@alfred.edu or call her at 607.871.2838.