Event type: Backyard BioBlitz
Number of participants: 100 students
Event date: May 16, 2002

Event location - GPS Coordinates: 39 38.98N, 78 54.87W
General Description of area surveyed:
School Grounds - a few acres of remaining forest, a freshly cleared area, lawns, power line cut. Habitats - forest, disturbed early succession, edges, grassy lawns, borders on werland area on lower end.

What species was suprising?
Garlic mustard and multiflora rose are both invasives. Also honeysuckle. All have been here for sometime. The wood frog was a suprise. Pileated woodpecker was a nice sighting too.

Mr. Ken Baxter reports:
This really helped my students get more of an idea of what biodiversity is all about. It's definitely something I will do again. Next time, I think I'll do more preparation of the students. They could use field guides but I allowed them to kind of choose whatever they wanted to find. Next time I'll assign them certain species types and strategies for maximizing their finds.

This is a great start to getting the public more aware of biodiversity. It is strangely enough a difficult concept for kids to grasp and the event helped. This year, more than ever, students responded to a question on the final about the greatest environmental problem facing us today as 'biodiversity.' That is a strong indicator of the success of the event and the focus it provided.