3/15/2024 0 Comments Alisa sabirova alisa samsonova![]() Reding was thrilled to begin teaching Advanced Placement environmental science in 2004. ![]() ![]() Projects like the Land Lab help retain these green-space connections. Natural habitats are fewer and farther between – a checkerboard landscape, and without enough connected green spaces to move through, wildlife is threatened, Reding says. Jim Reding shows off the Land Lab to Ohio Department of Agriculture officials (left) and to visitors a during a tour (right). “As we lose areas that are natural and they become more industrialized, the protected and restored areas become even more valuable,” he says. Jim Reding, Granville High School science teacher and the mentor of students who started the land lab, believes that the project is now more important than ever. Intel expects to employ at least 3,000 people on this land – 1,000 acres that once looked just as the restored Land Lab looks now – woodland and prairie that settlers turned into farmland. The factory site is 10 miles west of the Land Lab. While farmland is hardly considered a boost for biodiversity, even green space steeped in pesticides and herbicides is changing rapidly as commercial development grows in central Ohio.Īmong the latest is one of the most significant: Intel, the computer chip manufacturer, is converting corn and soybean fields into a campus that it says will become the largest factory complex of its kind in the world. Now home to thousands of wildlife species, meticulously mowed hiking trails, and a steady stream of families on morning walks, the Land Lab emerged from the very corn fields from which it stands apart today. “I doubt that you would find a project that is more diverse – more inclusive – anywhere,” Sodergren says. ![]() “The Land Lab in Granville is probably the marquee example” of schoolyard habitats providing such high value for students in the country. Department of Fish and Wildlife, sets Granville’s project far above others he’s been involved with. From providing inspiration for poetry classes to being the ultimate hands-on ecology lab, and even a collection site for the school district dining halls’ maple syrup, the Land Lab has changed the landscape of Granville and its school system.īrent Sodergren, the Ohio state coordinator for the U.S. In the last decade, the space has drawn butterflies, birds, and birdwatchers from across the country, as well as biologists, nearby Denison University students, and Granville school district classes in a variety of subjects. The Land Lab has grown to almost 100 acres since the first 43 acres of ground were restored in 2014. This conservation area, research field, community park and classroom is the largest K-12 outdoor education center in Ohio, according to its website. It’s easy to drive by the Granville Land Lab without realizing that high school seniors brainstormed the project, fourth graders planted the hickories, and, nearly a decade later, one of the first students involved in the project married her husband among the wildflowers she persuaded the school board to allow. This circularity was not without a lot of effort. From a flooded cornfield to a construction site, the land spent more than a century being torn apart before it could soften back into its natural state – with the help of Granville students and a particularly creative teacher. If not for Granville’s Intermediate School sitting at the edge of the plot, the space would look entirely wild, untouched. ![]() The native prairie immediately stands apart from central Ohio’s corn and soybean fields, many of which are giving way to housing, commercial, and industrial development. It’s rolling land thick with native grasses, Queen Anne’s lace, young maples, and cattail-rimmed wetlands. Honeybees danced earlier this year between thousands of goldenrod flowers in a 100-acre plot just outside Granville. ![]()
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