Alan R. Berkowitz
Institute of Ecosystem Studies

Urban ecosystems represent a bewildering but vitally important subject and setting for innovative forms of research, teaching and learning. In my role as Education Team Leader for the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, I have been leading the education portion of the research. Some of our most exciting accomplishments to date include:

1. A successful series of short-courses on Investigating Urban Ecosystems where scientists and educators work together to develop research-based instructional plans for engaging students in such topics as Animals Life in Urban Landscapes, Plants and People in the City, Soil Ecology, Ecological History of Baltimore, and Modeling Ecosystem Services.
2. Teacher- and student-generated investigations of soil microbes, urban soils, hydrology, or the ecological history of the city's reservoir system. This work resulted in a CD that is used by Department of Natural Resources land managers.
3. Collaboration with the Carrie Murray Nature Center to begin developing displays and ecology education programs in this urban forest park.
4. A program at the Rognel Heights Cultural Center where young people learned about gardening from their own efforts and by interviewing their neighbors.

In the coming years I will be in examining schoolyards and gardens as models for understanding larger urban ecosystems. Both school sites and gardens contain much of the richness and structure of more complex systems. However, they are more accessible for detailed study of structure/function and input/output/storage relationships, they can be placed in interesting social, geographic and biological contexts, and they can be compared within and between urban and other areas.

Teaching about whole systems -- ecology of the schoolyard, of the garden, of the city as opposed to ecology in these places -- represents an enormous and enticing challenge for our work. This work will have both a research and an education dimension, and take place both in the small towns and cities of the Hudson Valley and in Baltimore. For more information, see Garden Mosaics.

Back