Engaging Pre-Service Teachers and Elementary School Students in the Forestry Reclamation Approach Through Earthworm Inoculation

Abstract

In the spring of 2009, a partnership was formed between the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative (ARRI) and the Appalachian Coal Country Watershed Team (ACCWT) for the purpose of restoring forests on post-bond release mine sites in Appalachia. ARRI is a broad-based citizen/industry/government program working to promote and encourage the planting of productive trees on Title IV (abandoned coal mine land) and Title V (active coal mine land) sites under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA). The ACCWT, an innovative partnership between the Office of Surface Mining (OSM) and AmeriCorps*VISTA was founded in response to requests from small, community volunteer-based watershed groups throughout coal country to target problems associated with the legacy of pre-regulatory coal mining in Appalachian watersheds. As a result of the partnership between ACCWT and ARRI, 27,000 trees were planted on 36 acres of previously reclaimed mined land by 520 volunteers in five Appalachian coal states in the spring of 2009. In addition, because the value of earthworms in improving soil quality and thus, improving plant survival is well documented, elementary education students from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) had the opportunity to develop vermiculture protocols and earthworm lesson plans for use by teachers participating in these reforestation efforts, as part of a service learning project in their life science content class. The protocols were distributed to classroom teachers in areas served by the ARRI/ACCWT reclamation project to assist them in raising earthworms and promoting earthworm-related learning experiences with their students. Earthworms were then released by elementary and middle school students while trees were being planted on old mine sites in an effort to improve soil quality and increase tree survival. A discussion of this vermiculture project, which included the inoculation of earthworms into mine soils of pre- and post-SMCRA mine sites near Haysi, Virginia, and Carcassonne, Kentucky are described in this paper.