Local Creek Research Articles

Hydrogeochemical analysis of processes affecting HCH removal using ZVI-based treatment technology

In the 1960s, ca. 3000–5000 tons of HCH residue were disposed of in an overburden dump at the Hájek kaolin/uranium mine site (Czech Republic). The dump leachate, which has a 136 μg/l average total content of hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) isomers, discharges into a local creek and contaminates the ecosystem. A full-scale prototype for the treatment of dump leachate comprised three sequential stages: 1) permeable reactive modules filled with macro-zerovalent iron (mZVI), 2) a biosorption module and 3) an aerobic wetland module. After commissioning, HCH removal efficiency reached 95%, but decreased to 70% over the following 230 days, primarily due to the efficiency of the mZVI modules dropping from 76% to 39%. Hydrogeochemical analysis and geochemical modelling revealed that the reduction in efficiency was mainly caused by passivation of mZVI surfaces and clogging of mZVI pore spaces through precipitation of goethite, calcite and rhodochrosite, or siderite and magnetite instead of goethite where boundary conditions for O2 differed. XRD analysis of the solid phase from the mZVI modules confirmed the geochemical modelling results. The major part of the precipitated products (46–66 wt%) comprised a ferric hydroxide amorphous phase, especially in the initial mZVI module inlet, with goethite the second most abundant precipitate (10–40 wt%). Siderite and calcite also mainly precipitated in the initial module inlet. In conclusion, mZVI appears to be a suitable reductant for HCH; however, the longevity of the ZVI-based treatment system was negatively affected by precipitates in the presence of high concentrations of iron, manganese and carbonate species.

Community‐driven science and science education: Living in and navigating the edges of equity, justice, and science learning

Community‐driven science and science education: Living in and navigating the edges of equity, justice, and science learning

Calibration-free Solid-State Ion-Selective Electrode Based on a Polarized PEDOT/PEDOT-S-Doped Copolymer as Back Contact.

Solid-contact ion-selective electrodes (ISEs) have the inherent advantage of being miniaturized in addition to maintaining high selectivity and sensitivity of the ionophore-based ISE. The major disadvantage of ISEs is the necessity of performing a calibration curve (varying the intercept in the linear calibration curve equation) each time before running experiments, which limits their application as one-time disposable sensors or for use in remote water sample analysis. To overcome these challenges, we designed a unique back contact made of 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT) and 4-(2,3-dihydrothieno[3,4-b][1,4]dioxin-2-yl-methoxy)-1-butanesulfonic acid, sodium salt (EDOT-S). The calibration-free ISEs showed near Nernstian responses of 57.2 ± 0.2 mV/log [K+] and 28.5 ± 0.3 mV/log [Ca2+], while maintaining their respective selectivity against major interfering ions. The detection limits for Ca2+ and K+ ISEs were 0.45 ± 0.01 and 1.68 ± 0.18 μM, respectively. The charging cycles of the PEDOT: PEDOT-S back contact allowed us to fix the background potential at a desired fixed intercept value across different ionophores (K+, Ca2+). This protocol was used to determine the K+ and Ca2+ contents in creek water samples. The activity and concentration of [Ca2+] and [K+] in a local creek was found to be 257 ± 7.3 and 28.1 ± 1.1 μM, respectively.

Aquatic invertebrate community structure and phenology of the intermittent treed swamps of the semi-arid Paroo lowlands in Australia.

The middle Paroo lowlands in semi-arid western New South Wales support numerous intermittent wetlands of various types. Differences between them are promoted by three ecological drivers: salinity, turbidity and hydroperiod. Community structure and phenology of the two most common types, saline lakes and claypans, are known but similar ecologies are lacking for the third most common wetland, the treed swamps. These are of six subtypes distinguished by dominant tree species, geomorphology and hydroperiod, all with similar community structure and phenology, but with differing invertebrate diversities. Summed diversity is not as high as in local creek pools, the shorter hydroperiods and simpler geomorphology of the treed swamps being restrictive so that there is almost no replacement of species during the early dominance of branchiopods and later of insects. Such treed swamps are uncommon in the semi-arid zone, but much more speciose treed swamps are known under similar and seasonally dry Mediterranean climates of the Western Australian Wheatbelt where hydroperiods are more stable.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11273-021-09846-0.

Evaluating narratives of ecocide with the stratigraphic record at Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, Illinois, USA

AbstractNarratives of ecocide, when a society fails due to self‐inflicted ecologic disaster, have been broadly applied to many major archaeological sites based on the expected environmental consequences of known land‐use practices of people in the past. Ecocide narratives often become accepted in a discourse, despite a lack of direct evidence that the hypothesized environmental consequences of land‐use practices occurred. Cahokia Mounds, located in a floodplain of the central Mississippi River Valley, is one such major archaeological site where untested narratives of ecocide have persisted. The wood‐overuse hypothesis suggests that tree clearance in the uplands surrounding Cahokia led to erosion, causing increasingly frequent and unpredictable floods of the local creek drainages in the floodplain where Cahokia Mounds was constructed. Recent archaeological excavations conducted around a Mississippian Period (AD 1050–1400) of earthen mound in the Cahokia Creek floodplain shows that the Ab horizon on which the mound was constructed remained stable until industrial development. The presence of a stable ground surface (Ab horizon) from Mississippian occupation to the mid‐1800s does not support the expectations of the wood‐overuse hypothesis. Ultimately, this research demonstrates that pre‐Colombian ecological change does not inherently cause geomorphic change, and narratives of ecocide related to geomorphic change need to be validated with the stratigraphic record.

Navigation System for MACÁBOT an Autonomous Surface Vehicles Using GPS Aided Strapdown Inertial Navigation System

In this work the design, implementation and real-time tests of a navigation system for the autonomous surface vehicle MACABOT is presented. This vehicle represents a versatile platform to perform several tasks in the marine environment, such as; ports maintenance, marine productive ecosystems studies and bathymetries. The navigation system is responsible for accurately determining the position, velocity and attitude of the vehicle. It represents a fundamental component to autonomously carry out any of the aforementioned tasks. In this work, the navigation system is developed based on a GPS aided strap-down inertial navigation system using an extended Kalman filter sensor fusion algorithm. In order to provide an adaptive approach to the sensor fusion algorithm tuning a fuzzy inference system is used. The navigation system was implemented as a package for the Robot Operating System, benefiting from the advantages of heterogeneity, integration and hardware abstraction. Real time tests of the MACABOT on a local creek were carried out, showing satisfactory performance of the navigation system in both position and velocity estimates. In addition to these tests, simulations of GPS outages were carried out with the registered data to evaluate the performance of the navigation system in such cases

Distribution and sources of trace element pollutants in the sediments of the industrialised Port Kembla Harbour, New South Wales, Australia

A detailed geochemical analysis of sediment samples from the heavily industrialised Port Kembla Harbour, 70 km south of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia, has delineated areas that are heavily contaminated with trace element pollutants. Local creek delta sand accumulations, basin mud deposits, reclamation deposits and exposed bedrock on the present harbour floor are consistent with the twentieth century Port Kembla industrial land and harbour development history, as well as known maritime shipping practices. The closed electrolytic copper refinery, one of the two major pollutant sources, has provided a very clear signature in the harbour opposite the main drain that discharged from these works. Copper pollution (up to 6070 mg/kg) is strongly correlated with high concentrations of gold, selenium, antimony, arsenic, lead and zinc. These pollutants appear to occur as silt- and sand-sized particulate matter, as well as pollutants that are probably chemically bound to clay, pyrite and organic matter. The second main pollutant source is the BlueScope steelworks that has been responsible for high concentrations of iron (and minor associated cobalt), kish, pyrolytic carbon and fly ash. The steelworks, along with other industrial, urban and automobile sources, supply additional quantities of copper, lead and zinc to the aquatic environment. Coal and coke dust also form important pollutants. The pollutants are currently fairly stable under the prevailing alkaline reducing conditions within the sediment. The proposed future reclamation and dredging within the harbour needs to consider the implications of moving highly contaminated sediment, without altering its alkalinity or oxidation potential, to prevent release of contaminants.

Monitoring turbidity from above: Deploying small unoccupied aerial vehicles to image in‐stream turbidity

AbstractSmall unoccupied aerial systems (sUASs) are increasingly applied to study hydrologic processes and water quality. Here, we evaluate a novel application of sUAS to stream turbidity monitoring, with the goal of extending analyses implemented with satellite remote sensing to enable high resolution, rapid collection of turbidity imagery along smaller waterbodies. To accomplish this, we collected multispectral imagery using two sUAS platforms under a range of environmental conditions along a local creek in Syracuse, NY. In addition, we collected in situ turbidity observations immediately after each flight along several transects along the creek, as well as within a clear plume created by a natural spring entering the main channel of the creek. The in situ turbidity values were compared with the mean and standard deviation of several single‐band and multiband indices extracted along similar transects from the sUAS flights. On the basis of data collected across several flights, we found optical metrics obtained from multispectral imagery correlated well with in situ turbidity measurements. Though many optical metrics yielded strong relationships considering only values within the main channel, values associated with the red band were strongly related to turbidity estimates from the main channel as well as lower turbidity values observed in the spring plume. Although there are still limitations of this approach associated with variable field conditions, results from this proof of concept analysis show that sUASs offer a promising avenue for cost‐effective turbidity monitoring.

SAMPLING IN THE WILD: HOW ATTENTION TO VARIATION SUPPORTS MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS’ SAMPLING PRACTICE

Sampling is a fundamental practice of many scientific disciplines. However, K–12 students are rarely asked to think critically about sampling decisions. Because of this, open questions remain about how best to support students in this practice. This study explores the emergent sampling practice of two classes of sixth-grade students as they investigate the ecology of a local creek. It draws on student interviews, pre/post-tests, student artifacts, and video recordings of classroom activity to identify and trace shifts in the ways in which students approached collecting data. The findings suggest three ways in which students’ attention to variation within the context of their ecological investigations supported their development of a more sophisticated practice of sampling. First published May 2018 at Statistics Education Research Journal Archives

Context-based learning in the middle years: achieving resonance between the real-world field and environmental science concepts

ABSTRACTThere is growing interest in how to engage middle school students in science to improve their enthusiasm for science and to arrest the decline in uptake in the senior years. Also, there is interest in improving students’ application of science to real-life situations, a requirement for international tests. One approach that offers hope for improving students’ connections between concepts and context is the context-based approach. Context-based units that connect canonical science with the real-world of the student’s local community have been trialled in the senior years but are new in the middle years. Research in senior classes has shown that students who were taught through a context-based approach demonstrated fluid transitions between the context and concepts in written work and student-student conversations. In the current ethnographic study we built on our previous work and investigated how students make connections between the environmental science concepts and the context of the weekly visits to the local creek. Students were immersed in the real-world context by completing an 11-week environmental science unit that required assessment of the health of a creek. Two assertions emerged; firstly, student-student conversations at the creek afforded students the opportunity for interconnections between environmental science concepts and the context (defined as resonance); and secondly, students’ written reports about the health of the creek demonstrated resonance. Furthermore, group work encouraged students the agency to complete sets of tasks that privileged visually obvious environmental science concepts such as pollution, identification of plants/animals or turbidity/flow rate.

On the volatilisation and decomposition of cyanide contaminations from gold mining

Cyanide leaching is the predominant process of gold extraction in large scale mining. Current initiatives for reducing the use of mercury in small scale and artisanal mining tend towards the cyanide technology as the only feasible alternative. Thus, the deliberate handling in consideration of the hazardous nature of cyanide compounds is an issue of particular importance. The hydrogen cyanide volatilised during the leaching process and from the tailings solutions after the gold extraction is reported to be destroyed by oxidation and photolysis from the surrounding atmosphere of gold mines and the sunlight. Cyanide solutions, drained into the surrounding waterbodies are stated to volatilise at a high rate, thus detoxifying them and releasing hydrogen cyanide to the air. In this study laboratory experiments and field tests were conducted to deliver basic data for the volatilisation and destruction of cyanide in the environment.In our laboratory tests we observed neither oxidation by the oxygen of air nor photolysis by UV-irradiation of cyanides after volatilisation from water. The whole amount of volatilised cyanide was found in the exhaust gas after absorption in a strong basic solution.Field experiments in Segovia (Colombia) could confirm these findings. Cyanide concentrations in a range 17 to 30mg/L were measured in a local creek. Hydrogen cyanide amounts of 5ppm were found in the atmosphere surrounding cyanide leaching facilities. With the findings of this study we want to point out that the concentrations of cyanide in the surrounding of cyanide leaching facilities exceed uncritical limits and a destruction via oxidation and photolysis is not detectable. These conclusions should result in initiatives to protect workers and the surrounding population of gold mines from contaminations of cyanide treatments.

Overcoming barriers to community participation in a catchment-scale experiment: building trust and changing behavior

AbstractCommunities have an important role to play in the protection of urban streams, particularly with how stormwater runoff from their properties is managed. As part of a larger research project, we used 3 sequential approaches to engage communities in protecting their local creek by managing their properties’ stormwater runoff. We assessed their success through surveys and measurements of uptake. Our initial efforts elicited strong interest from the community, but participation rates were greatest when the application process was simplified and barriers to participation were removed. The sequential implementation of the approaches limits inference of their comparative effectiveness, but the results suggest that the iterative and adaptive nature and extended period of the process facilitated the targeting of diverse motivations and the building of community trust, which in turn led to greater community participation.

Academic Success in Context-Based Chemistry: Demonstrating fluid transitions between concepts and context

Curriculum developers and researchers have promoted context-based programmes to arrest waning student interest and participation in the enabling sciences at high school and university. Context-based programmes aim for student connections between scientific discourse and real-world contexts to elevate curricular relevance without diminishing conceptual understanding. This interpretive study explored the learning transactions in one 11th grade context-based chemistry classroom where the context was the local creek. The dialectic of agency/structure was used as a lens to examine how the practices in classroom interactions afforded students the agency for learning. The results suggest that first, fluid transitions were evident in the student–student interactions involving successful students; and second, fluid transitions linking concepts to context were evident in the students' successful reports. The study reveals that the structures of writing and collaborating in groups enabled students' agential and fluent movement between the field of the real-world creek and the field of the formal chemistry classroom. Furthermore, characteristics of academically successful students in context-based chemistry are highlighted. Research, teaching, and future directions for context-based science teaching are discussed.

Coliform retention and release in biofilms formed on new and weathered irrigation pipes

Irrigation waters have come under increasing scrutiny as a potential source of pathogenic microorganisms contaminating fresh produce. It is generally assumed that the microbial concentrations entering and leaving irrigation pipe networks are identical. However, this may not be true if biofilms form on the inner surfaces of irrigation pipes. The retention and release of pathogens in biofilms are well documented in drinking water distribution systems, but very little data are available for irrigation systems. We examined the attachment and/or incorporation of total coliform, fecal coliform, and Escherichia coli bacteria into biofilms in new and used aluminum irrigation pipe. Water from a local creek in Maryland was used to conduct weekly irrigation events. Prior to each event, removable sections of pipe (coupons) were scraped to determine the extent of bacterial attachment; in addition, bacterial concentrations in residual water were determined. Substantial populations of coliform bacteria were found on the pipe surfaces. Old pipes had fewer attached or biofilm-incorporated coliforms and lower coliform concentrations in the residual water. High probabilities were found for average fecal coliform and total coliform concentrations being different between creek water and sprinkler water. These results have implications for monitoring and control of microbial quality of irrigation waters.

“Act locally, publish globally”: international/multi-disciplinary research efforts needed to understand the impact of globalization on science education

As I sit to write this editorial, I cannot help but reflect on my experiences over the last year serving as Lead Editor for this issue. Inviting different members of the editorial Review Board to serve as Lead Editors for upcoming issues is a new way CSSE is seeking to expand participation to a greater number of scholars in science education and to expand readership of the journal to a wider network of social scientists. By way of introduction to this issue, I describe what I have learned about the editorial process that is unique to this journal—as well I share how this experience has helped me to recognize the critical need for more international and multi-disciplinary research efforts, if we, as science educators are to both understand and actively inform/reform the ways in which globalization is shaping science education around the world. For the past 4 years, the Editors and Board Members of the journal have invited other science educators to meet and discuss sociocultural issues and research in science education. Each year there is a theme for the meeting and several of the manuscripts for this issue originated from research presented in 2007 at the inaugural Springer Forum held in Chicago. This issue contains four sets of papers organized around four original manuscripts that are loosely developed around the theme of Glocalization and is the second of three special issues to focus on science education in a global context. The first paper, co-authored by Lyn Carter and Ranjith Dediwalage, examined a school-based project entitled Sustainable Living by the Bay through the lens of globalization and offered a critical analysis of how neoliberal and neoconservative agendas in Australia are being expressed through government funding policies, which in turn, informed the development and implementation of K-12 science curricula that (re)produced Western canonical scientific knowledge at the expense of all other ways of knowing and doing science. Tali Tal and Iris Alkaher, in the second paper, examined the experiences of Bedouin and Israeli students who participated in an education for sustainability (EfS) project designed to bring together Arabic and Jewish youth and their teachers to engage in a cross-cultural exchange about a socio-environmental conflict related to the disputed use of a local creek and

Collaborative environmental projects in a multicultural society: working from within separate or mutual landscapes?

A multicultural socio-environmental project that is framed in the ideas of education for sustainability brought together Jew and Arab students was investigated to identify the participants’ views of the program’s objectives and their accomplishments. We investigated the project’s strengths and weaknesses according to the participants’ views and the way culturally diverse students addressed the main local socio-environmental conflict related to conservation versus development of a local creek. The participants agreed that the environmental objectives were properly attained, while the social objectives were accomplished to a limited extent. All the participants emphasized the importance of multicultural knowledge and expected to learn and work together. We found different views of the Jewish and the Arab participants regarding expectations, collaboration and overall satisfaction, with higher expectations of the Arab students and leaders. The students’ views of the local conflict varied but were not associated with their ethnic background. We suggest that the differences between the groups result from the different positions and needs of each community, and mainly as a consequence of the difficulties that the Arab minority faces in Israel. Overall, we found that the project allowed the expression of multiple voices of both groups, and suggested an applicable program for education for sustainability in a multicultural society. Open image in new windowOpen image in new window

In Overcoming Obstacles to Curriculum Integration, L.E.S.S. Can Be More!

Integrative curriculum Kevin stands knee-deep in the middle of a creek on a sunny October morning. Looking toward the creek bank, he holds up a wet, rusty object. What do you think it is? he shouts to Hector, who is kneeling in the sand filling test tubes with water samples. Kevin and Hector are engaged in an eightweek unit on the water cycle and stream ecology. They and their classmates had been concerned about the polluted conditions of a local creek, so with their teachers they developed an inquiry-based, integrative unit of study that combined class work, field study, and a service-learning component. Integrative/lnterdisciplinary curriculum You should start a new paragraph here, Mr. Ramsey advises. Thanks, Taylor replies to his geography teacher, as he works on his team's written report on orangutans. One of Taylor's teammates designs a poster display across the hall in the science classroom, while another diligently works in the computer lab, trying to finish a PowerPoint presentation on orangutans before lunchtime. Taylor's teachers have designed an integrated unit on endangered species that includes a trip to the local zoo and culminates with team reports and presentations on an endangered animal. Correlated curriculum Okay, Look at the chart on page 231 that shows monthly rainfall in Brazil. Can anyone tell me what the average monthly rainfall in Brazil is? For the first time in weeks, Shannon's hand shoots up to answer the question, along with a dozen other hands. I know this, Shannon thinks. We're learning averages in Mr. Hooper's math class. Shannon's math and social studies teachers have decided to correlate the curriculum standards for their subjects and reinforce the same skills and concepts in both of their classes. Conventional curriculum The sound of the bell startles Kendall. The highpitched drone signals the end of social studies class, and she is somewhat relieved. The bell also reminds her that math class is next. And what are we supposed to be doing in math today? Kendall wonders, as she tucks the half-finished social studies worksheet into her binder. Unfortunately, Kendall's experience typifies the conventional approach to curriculum in middle school classrooms throughout the United States. The vignettes in this article represent various approaches to middle level curriculum design, each of which we have experienced as students, teachers, and teacher educators in middle school classrooms. Arnold (1997, adapting Brazee & Cappeluti, 1995) located these approaches on a continuum with conventional curriculum and integrative curriculum at opposite ends.1 Kendall is experiencing a conventional school curriculum, in which clear boundaries exist between subject areas, and teachers make no effort to bring coherence to the curriculum. In contrast, some of Shannon's teachers are implementing a correlated curriculum, in which certain vocabulary, concepts, and skills are reinforced in multiple subjects. For Taylor and his classmates, the curricular boundaries between different subjects are blurred. They are experiencing a curriculum that may be considered interdisciplinary or integrated. Kevin and Hector's teachers joined with their students to develop an integrative learning experience. Curriculum at this level of integration will: * Explicitly involve questions and concerns from the young people who actually carry out the unit. * Involve widely shared, larger world concerns that are clear and compelling. * Engage a wide range of knowledge, skills, and resources. * Pose opportunities for in-depth and extended work. * Present possibilities for a wide variety of activities. * Present possibilities for personal and social action, both in school and outside school, (from Beane, 1993, p. 75) Does Kendall not deserve the same kind of engaging, integrative learning experience that Kevin and Hector are enjoying? …

Evaluation of Indicator-Based pH Measurements for Freshwater over a Wide Range of Buffer Intensities

Two different sulfonephthalein indicators, cresol red (CR) with a pKa of approximately 8.3 and bromothymol blue (BTB) with pKa of approximately 7.4, were tested for an analysis of freshwater over a broad range of pH and total alkalinity values. Measurements from an autonomous sensor system using a 1 cm optical path length were compared to those using a 10 cm path length on a benchtop spectrophotometer. The indicator pH perturbation was quantified with a thermodynamic model and nonlinear least-squares analysis. The laboratory study found that the perturbation-corrected pH differed between the 1 cm (large indicator perturbation) and 10 cm (small indicator perturbation) optical path length measurements from -0.017 to +0.15 with a median of +0.0041 pH units for CR and from -0.015 to +0.026 with a median of -0.0008 pH units for BTB. Precision was +0.0005-0.013 and +0.0001-0.0027 pH units for the 1 and 10-cm-path-length measurements, respectively. The autonomous sensor was deployed for 14 days in a local creek. Simultaneous glass pH electrode measurements had a large negative and drifting offset (-0.15 to -0.40 pH units) compared to the indicator-based measurements. This study is the first in situ comparison between potentiometric and spectrophotometric pH methods in a freshwater system.

Field-based monitoring of sediment runoff from natural gas well sites in Denton County, Texas, USA

This study evaluates sediment runoff from gas well development sites in Denton County, Texas. The magnitude of sediment runoff was investigated by intercepting sediment in traps and weirs at the periphery of each gas well site and by measuring the growth of debris lobes that formed down slope from two sites. Four debris lobes formed at one gas well site and one formed at a second site. Debris lobes ranged in size from 30 to 306 square meters. Sediment from one site entered local creek channels, either as a component of storm water runoff or, in one case, as a debris lobe that flowed into a channel. The study findings suggest that sediment movement is significantly diminished once areas disturbed by gas well construction become naturally re-vegetated. Based on estimates of debris lobe volumes, sediment loading rates of about 54 metric tonnes per hectare per year were calculated for one site. It is concluded that gas well development sites in areas similar to those studied, especially where vegetation has been removed and terrain has relatively steep slopes (greater than 6%), generate sediment runoff comparable to small construction sites and should therefore be considered for regulations requiring erosion and sediment control measures.

Hands On, Feet Wet: The Story of River Crossing Environmental Charter School

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 17 No. 4 (2007) ISSN: 1546-2250 Hands On, Feet Wet: The Story of River Crossing Environmental Charter School Rydberg, Victoria (2007). Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction; 233 pages. Recent scholarly articles and popular media have drawn attention to a national crisis in the United States: youths’ disconnection from nature. Nature Deficit Disorder has become a popular diagnosis to describe the “de-natured” child who, as Rich Louv (2005) depicts, spends more time “plugged-in” to various media outlets or in front of the television than playing outside. This reflects the trend that children living in the United States spend, on average, 30 minutes of unstructured time outdoors each week, compared to 13.5 hours of watching television, playing video games and using their computers (Hofferth and Sandberg 2001). Hofferth, a family studies professor at the University of Maryland, also found that at the proportion of children ages 9 to 12 who spent time hiking, walking, fishing, playing on the beach or gardening declined 50 percent between 1997 and 2003 (St. George 2007). Thus, during a time when emphasis has been placed on our de-natured, de-sensitized and indoor-bound youth, the book Hands on, Feet Wet is timely, relevant and refreshing. Hands on, Feet Wet is a story of the creation and evolution of River Crossing Environmental Charter School in Portage, Wisconsin. The book weaves the personal challenges and successes of the author, Victoria Rydberg, with vignettes from students, parents, local professionals, other educators to create a River Crossing anthology. Full of photos, media coverage, student poems and journal entries, the book has a photo-album feel. Yet, these personal struggles and triumphs are the very hook that keeps the reader engaged. In fact, the book resurrects the localness in the reader, possibly inspiring them to take a walk to a local creek and look inside. 423 Rydberg’s personal story as a young, environmentally zealous educator parallels the creation of River Crossing School. The book begins at year one, day one of the creation of the school—as well as at the start of Rydberg’s career as the only teacher at River Crossing. Later in the book, the reader begins to understand that being a teacher at River Crossing also means being a teacher, mom, friend, disciplinarian and community instigator. Taking on the role as head educator, instigator, curriculum planner and life coach is no small feat for Rydberg, who is fresh out of college, wide-eyed and passionate for change. Yet, it is because of these very qualities that both River Crossing and Rydberg grow into their respected positions for middle school students in Portage, WI. Based on a one-room schoolhouse model, River Crossing Charter School extends education beyond the walls of the traditional classroom and into nearby ponds, fields, and marshes. The environmental restoration-based curriculum is integrated, and subjects cross-pollinate through the individual projects that students complete during the school year. For example, this year, River Crossing students designed and created a 1800 square foot rain garden for the new International Aldo Leopold Foundation Legacy Center, which helped students learn and apply important science and math concepts, as well as taught them teamwork and communication skills necessary for work in the real world. In a student essay, Kate Wolf captures the type of learning that takes place at River Crossing, sharing, “We learned more doing things hands-on in the field and classroom than we did sitting in one place taking notes, because we got to feel it, understand it, get it under our fingernails” (63). Such personal vindications verify that River Crossing’s approach walks the talk of environmental education: learning about the environment through being in the environment. Like any new school, the growing pains are tough, yet every success is seen as a step forward to the creation of a solid and wellrespected school. One example of the tangible successes the students have achieved are their high test scores in reading, math, science and social studies. Since River Crossing students have to fulfill the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, they have to take the same standardized tests as all other...