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| BATON ROUGE – Over the past several years, LSU ecology students arriving to class have come in fully protective gear, tools in hand, ready to battle the elements. What may sound like a challenging scenario for any teacher, though, has been a successful service-learning partnership with BREC’s Bluebonnet Swamp Nature Area. LSU students work with BREC to remove invasive plants from the Bluebonnet Swamp area and conduct research on the activities’ impact on reducing invasive spread and promoting native plant diversity. Bluebonnet Swamp is home to invasive plants like elephant ear and Chinese privet, which are non-native species that invade an environment and have adverse effects on other species in the habitat. Many of these plants were brought to Louisiana from overseas to be used in gardens or even as food. Invasive plants compete with native vegetation and often take over its habitat. The removal activities have helped students in Rebecca Effler’s principles of ecology labs learn to easily identify invasive plants like the ones found at Bluebonnet Swamp. The class travels to the nature area to remove species like the Chinese privet, elephant ear, paper mulberry trees and tallow. For the larger plants, such as the paper mulberry, students cut down the trees and apply herbicide to the trunks. Smaller vegetation, like the elephant ears and privet, are more easily disposed of by removing the plant at the root. The intended result is to give native plants a greater opportunity to flourish without the competition of the invasive species. An added result is that students get a chance to see first-hand the impact invasive plants have on a habitat. “It’s not until they really start cutting down these treees do they really notice how prevalent these invasive species are,” said Effler. “Identifying them helps them realize how much these plants impact our environment. It really sends the message home about the extent of invasvie species in our system.” Reducing invasive spread doesn’t stop at removal, however. Students in Effler’s class also plant native species in removal areas to discourage the re-growth of the invasive plants. Last spring, students visited the LSU Bird Refuge to plant 200 bald cypress trees and 300 red mulberry trees. The seedlings were donated from Little Leaf Louisiana and the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry. Effler plans for her students to return to the Bird Refuge next spring to continue these effforts. “Once you start thinking about what your class can do to provide a service to the Baton Rouge community, it really opens up a lot of opportunities,” said Effler. During the 2009 summer intersession, Alyssa Hake’s classes set out to determine what effects, if any, these activities were having on the presence of invasive plants at Bluebonnet Swamp after several years of the LSU service-learning project. Specifically, students studied the impact removal was having on Chinese privet, or Ligustrum sinense, and elephant ear, or Xanthosoma sagittifolium, an aquatic plant. “The BIOL 4254 labs, and other biology labs, have been removing invasive plants for BREC’s Bluebonnet Swamp and other locations for several semesters,” said Hakes. “Because of this, there were areas of the swamp where invasives had been removed, and places where they had not been removed yet. This presented a great opportunity to test for the effectiveness of the removal procedure as well as study the effect of invasive species spread on the native plant community.” Students set up experimental plots in areas of the Swamp with invasive removal and without, and calculated plant species diversity, abundance of invasive plants and other variables from multiple places in both areas. They investigated whether there was a difference in the number of invasive plants and species diversity between the areas with and without removal, and tested whether there was a negative relationship between invasive coverage and species diversity. While not at the Swamp, Hakes’ students conducted research about invasive plants, analyzed data from the project and designed posters to highlight the experiment and its results. Both groups discovered that the removal treatment of elephant ear and Chinese privet had been effective in reducing the spread of invasive species and increasing the diversity of native plants. “Students met course objectives by using the scientific method to design and carry out an ecological experiment,” said Hakes. “The results they presented to Bluebonnet Swamp will continue to help inform management policy and teach the public about how invasive plants affect the native community.” At the end of the class, Hakes’ students visited the swamp’s summer camp to teach the campers about the invasive species present at the Swamp and to discuss the classes’ efforts to reduce invasive spread. Campers then joined the LSU students in the swamp to identify and remove invasive plants. The Department of Biological Sciences will offer a number of service-learning classes over the next year, including a microbiology class that will assist elementary school students with science fair projects and a project with Effler involving high school students in monitoring wood duck activity at the LSU lakes. “Service-learning is a great way to have students meet course objectives while performing a service that benefits the community,” said Hakes. “Service-learning is also a way for me to evaluate the ability of my students to apply their knowledge to a real-life problem rather than have them just relay information back to me. In my experience, students are more motivated and perform better when they know that the relevance and readership of their work extends beyond the classroom and instructor.” For more information about service-learning at LSU, visit the Center for Community Engagement, Learning, and Leadership’s Web site at www.ccell.lsu.edu or contact Program Director Jan Shoemaker at 225-578-9264. - 30 - |
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