Using a Campus Stream to Teach a Variety of Environmental Science Concepts

The Essentials of Environmental Science is an introductory level laboratory course required of all students majoring in Environmental Studies at Vassar College. Taught in the fall semester, the course makes use of the good weather to conduct a series of field and laboratory exercises on a stream that flows through campus. Upstream of Vassar, the Casperkill flows through a big-box shopping district located on landfills, whereas downstream of campus it flows through an ecological preserve, providing a variety of land use zones to explore. Topics covered in the lab portion of the course include hydrology, the use of benthic macroinvertebrates to assess aquatic pollution levels, controls on water quality parameters, and assessment of riparian buffer conditions. Students gain exposure to basic surveying, stream flow measurement, alkalinity titration, spectrophotometry, use of densiometers to measure canopy cover, geographic information systems, and simple statistics. As students work their way through the exercises they are encouraged to think about how land use practices impact hydrology, water quality, and aquatic ecosystem health. Contrasts between the big box shopping district and the ecological preserve are marked, and students rapidly discover that nutrients and conductivity levels are elevated in areas of the watershed with high levels of impervious surface and that these locations tend to provide poor habitat for aquatic invertebrates. Students seem to enjoy the opportunity to generate a rich environmental inventory of the stream and its watershed though some feel that the length of time spent on one stream detracts from learning about other topics in which they are interested.