“Students strolled the winding timber boardwalk in Bicentennial Park to discover the riverside wetlands that shelter colourful waterbirds plus the largest mangrove forest remaining on the Parramatta River,” said Head of Sustainability and Geography Teacher Carmelo Fedele.
Students assessed how intertidal wetlands function, the human impacts placed upon them and the adaptive management strategies that are used to protect them.
Their fieldwork involved:
– use of a Geographic Information System (GIS)
– vegetation transects
– quadrat sampling
– sketching land use maps
– using scientific monitoring equipment
– observations and illustrations of mangrove tree and saltmarsh plant adaptations
“It was a fantastic day for some hands-on learning in the field. Students enjoyed visiting the waterbird refuge, getting their hands in the mud and hearing the dreaming story of the Blue Tongue lizard.”
