On April 4th, the YES Team at Royalton High School hosted a series of educational workshops for themselves and their fellow students. The event consisted of three sessions which included water quality testing with YES, forest migration with the University of Minnesota program on assisted forest migration, and renewable energy with Clean Energy Resource Teams (CERTs). These topics were identified by the Royalton YES Students as areas of interest and subjects that they wanted to learn more about and share with their fellow students.
The Royalton YES team expressed interest in learning more about water quality testing, specifically in the Platte River, which runs through their community and very near to their school. They worked with YES Team Manager – Jake Schwinghammer – to test nitrogen, phosphates, pH and dissolved oxygen in the river. They also sifted through substrate collected from the river to find macroinvertebrates and identify them. After finding and identifying these aquatic critters, they considered each one’s sensitivity to pollution and what diversity in aquatic life can tell us about the quality of their environment. Students also learned about the impact that seasonal changes and human activity can have on their river.
Clean energy solutions have been at the forefront of environmental action in recent years. The Royalton YES Team wanted to know more about clean energy and the impact it can have on their community. They had an opportunity during their workshop to meet with some members of their regional CERTs team including Heidi Auel, Imani Mosher, Jacob Hansen and Maren Butenhoof, to learn about the future of renewable energy.
Students at Royalton High School also had a chance to learn about climate change and how humans can work to help our forest ecosystems adapt and migrate as the climate continues to shift. They met with the folks from the University of Minnesota Extension program on assisted forest migration including Liv Jascor, Shannon Meehan and Sydney Trimble. The YES Team and their peers learned how to identify trees such as Yellow Birch, about seedlings and about migration patterns.
The feedback from the Royalton YES Team and Coach was amazing; Youth Eco Solutions hopes to implement more workshops like this in the seasons to come.
