Snapshot of a Multi-Year Multidisciplinary Environmental Mapping and Restoration Project

This article presents a snapshot of the authors' first restoration project with young children which grew out of a fourth- and fifth-grade forestry curriculum. The restoration project was part of a long-term plan for enhancing the wild areas of the campus for wildlife habitat and for educational use. It is a native oak woodland and riparian habitat, but with substantial areas of invasive, non-native plants. Plans included the expansion of the current restoration area, upgrade of the old nature trail, restoration of riparian habitat along the creek, and creation of a butterfly garden outside of the Environmental Center. All of these projects require the ability to accurately map the campus and then to input the data. This is also key to documenting the habitat's changes over time--both natural changes and those caused by the activities. In this article, the authors describe the students' process of restoring the habitat and what the students learned from it.