CU Geography Pairs up with WV Parks

Many children showed up to participate in the BioBlitz event hosted by Concord’s Geography department.

Photo By Anastasiia Vorobeva

This year America celebrates the one hundred year anniversary of its park systems. National Geographic and the State Park Services teamed up to have a geography day at the parks featuring BioBlitz – an event for school students where they can participate in fun activities to learn more about the nature. The Geography department of Concord University took part in the National Geographic Society and the State Park Services initiative and organized an event at New River Gorge National Park at Camp Brook Side for school students on September 16.

    In  total, 80 fourth graders from Hinton Area Elementary School participated in such activities as stream monitoring, dendrochronology, learning about plants, archaeology, astronomy, and visited birds exhibit, says Dr. Joe Manzo, Professor of Geography here at Concord University. The event took a lot of time to plan. “On campus we had some great help. Kathy Ball who runs the Bonner Program, she had Bonner students there to help out. And Dr. Alice Hawthorne-Allen presented an astronomy program in the evening for the students. Dr. Saladyga taught kids dendrochronology.” Dr. Manzo started meeting with park rangers in April of the previous year. They had regular meetings sometimes at Concord and sometimes at the park to plan it all out. It was actually the second event the geography department and the state service park organized together this year. The first one took place at Harpers Ferry in May. “We were only obligated to do one, but we wanted to do two. One at Harpers Ferry, and one down here”, says Dr. Manzo. As a part of the National Initiative of National Geographic Society these kind of events were going all over the country.

    The event was a success. “Children liked being outside and they actually liked all the events out there because they were field events. They certainly liked getting their feet wet in the New River. And they liked the birds. And they were amazed at the core samples which you can get from trees. And they loved the astronomy program”. The BioBlitz program was designed to be fun. The Park Rangers showed children how to monitor the clearness of the river at certain places of the New River. Dr. Tom Saladyga, Assistant Professor of Geography at Concord, taught students how to take samples of tree cores to see what years were dry years and if trees were attacked by any diseases. Dendrochronology is, “technically showing kids that trees can tell a story of environmental history,” says Dr. Saladyga. Children loved the demonstration of taking tree core samples. All kids got an example as a souvenir. Concord students who came to help with the event helped to glue the samples to small section of logs, because the samples are very gentle. Dr. Alice Hawthorne-Allen, assistant professor in the Division of Science at Concord, brought telescopes, and 32 students who decided to stay overnight at the park had a chance to learn more about stars. They also built a campfire and made s’mores while telling stories. 

    “I think what they [National Geography Society and State Park Service] want to do is to create a new generation of park visitors,” says Dr. Manzo. “Fourth grade is a good place to begin introducing this new generation of park visitors to the park system”. Overall, the event went good - all specialists were patient, geography major students and students from the Bonner’s program were helping with children, the weather was good. Dr. Manzo says that by organizing this event they wanted to make children understand, “without pressing them that people and the environment represent a very important question for the twenty-first century.”