High schoolers become scientists for a day: how do you describe a forest with data?

For the first time, we had two classes of high school students come for an educational activity to learn about local forests. We spent a long time having a discussion. We asked what they like about nature. We introduced that ecologists all start with being curious about a natural phenomena and they endeavor to understand what they observe. The fundamental concepts of ecology and biodiversity were explained. How scientists  focus on different ecological scales, from individuals up to the scale of biome. We talked about diversity being a relative term and why tropical ecosystems are the most diverse ecosystems. We then asked students to guess how many tree species, butterfly species, and herbaceous plants are found in our local environment. We shared that hundreds sounds like a lot but when you compare the numbers to other tropical places, Taiwan falls in the middle! 

We then focused our discussion on the scale of communties- different species sharing the same space will have different interactions, either positive or negative. In the case of forests, trees sharing the same space will start to compete. Information on how big the trees are, how many total trees,  how many species and their numbers can give us information about the forest structure and its community. Simple information can be enough to describe whether the forest is in a highly competitive state, a mature state, a diverse state, or a poor state. 

With these concepts kept in mind, we prepared a practical recording sheet for students in groups to set forest plots and measure trees. Students had to use a compass and measuring tape to lay out a 10x10 m square plot. They then measured the diameter of trees and identified species with the help of an assistant by their side.

With the information they collected, they would be able to gain information such as species richness, density, most common trees, rarest trees. At the end, every group had all the recording sheets of all groups. Their last task was to summarize everyones response and to use the information they had to describe the forest. Most students said that the forest was diverse and that they also saw many spiders. They were able to say which species was most dominant and whether most trees were large trees or small trees. This exercise was a great challenge for teenagers who have never done field work like this before. But with time, they were able to complete the tasks and shared that they enjoyed collecting the data the most.