Biodiversity in the city: protection of pollinators

Home Biodiversity in the city: protection of pollinators

The Science Team

School

Liceo Niccolo Copernico

Teachers

Nadia Gambon, Francesco Gobbo

Participants

No of students

Students age

15-16

Status

Finished

Project description

The school intends to bring students closer to the theme of biodiversity in the city through the study of pollinating insects and the host plants. After the knowledge of the insects and botanical species involved, a practical part is planned with the construction of small “houses” (bug-hotel) capable of housing pollinators, and with field activities for the recognition of animal and plant species of the city environment. The following steps involve the installation of houses in urban environments, particularly in the areas adjacent to the school, the subsequent mapping of those occupied by insects and botanical species capable of providing nourishment to them.

Keywords: Resource efficiency

Needs: Visit stakeholders for mentoring

Explore

Activate

Report

Project description

Keywords

Resource efficiency

Needs

Visit stakeholders for mentoring

Learn

Padlet tool

This tool is a free virtual space/platform on which to insert teaching materials such as texts, links, images, videos, maps and documents of various kinds. We are using this tool to collect photos made by students concerning plants, pollinators and bug hotel. For more details see the “Activate” section of the project.

14th December 2020. Training seminars

Below are the topics addressed:

– Pulchra project, Agenda2030 and the sustainable development of the territory (see the youtube link and the “Pulchra Introduction and sustainable development of the territory.pdf”). Professor Maurizia Sigura of the University of Udine (UNIUD).

– What is biodiversity? what are ecosystem services and what are those related to urban green areas? How to recognize plants? how to estimate the height of the plants? (see the “biodiversity and ecosystem services.pdf”) Fiorella Coco (UNIUD).

16th December 2020. Pollinating insects

By attending the lecture of Francesco Lami (UNIUD) we learned how to recognize insects, how to build bug hotel and how to do insect sampling (see the youtube link and the “Pollinating insects and bug hotels.pdf”).

Study/educational material

–

Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llz_ENz1Gx0 Welcome to Pulchra

Food for thought

Explore

Support project as mentor/expert

Francesco Boscutti
Francesco Lami
Nadia Vedova
Pietro Zandigiacomo

Provide data / material / equipment for school projects

Francesco Boscutti
Francesco Lami
Pietro Zandigiacomo

Activate

Science Teams Activities

–how did students think up their project? They divided into 8 groups to formulate ideas and proposals for the project. In a single event/meeting they presented their ideas to teachers and then, ideas were reworked into a single overall project idea that will be presented during the first Pulchra workshop.

– Since Monday 29 March, the students of the 2Alsa and 3Alsa classes, with their professors Gobbo and Gambon, are collecting materials to be analyzed and used also in class (at the moment we have online teaching because of restriction measures for the COVID-19). The related documents concern photos of plants encouraging pollinators, as well as videos of pollinators being attracted to the same plants. In addition, there are images of bug hotels that can be easily created with materials present in our homes or easily available. All the material is contained in special padlets:

one specific for botany https://padlet.com/nadiagambon/3c6tsz6xjiqipx6q
one for entomology https://padlet.com/nadiagambon/w9gjmq00p7qy15yg
one relating to bug hotels https://it.padlet.com/nadiagambon/judyvhnem6hn3yit

Therefore, thanks to the available tools, we can collect and identify the species of pollinating plants and insects also during the distance learning.

-4th May 2021. Activities in the school garden

How are plant communities characterized? How to recognize plants? During the outdoor class on May 4, 2021, students learn how to “study” the school garden and plant sampling techniques. Concepts addressed: environment, biodiversity and parameters/indices to measure it, sampling units, plant communities, ecological response, homogeneity of vegetation, abundance of habitats and species.

– Not even the Covid pandemic stopped us, we also worked from home by building bug hotels with available materials (https://it.padlet.com/nadiagambon/judyvhnem6hn3yit), and back to school we continued to build bug hotels that we can place in our school garden.

We created also a monitoring table for our bug hotel. tabella dati monitoraggio

Work in progress: the idea is also to distribute a kit (bug hotel built, plant seeds useful for pollinators, descriptive sheet, etc.) to other schools and associations to encourage the community to encourage the presence of pollinators and the biodiversity in the city.

Development Of The City Challenges

29th January 2021. The first Pulchra workshop.

During the online event, the City Science Teams presented their project ideas. The presentation concerns the study of the nesting places of pollinating insects and the botanical species they visit in order to find plants and “houses” suited to their needs to facilitate their stay within the city ecosystem. The workshop was attended by professors from the University of Udine, botanists and entomologists, teachers from other schools and owners of plant nurseries who, with their contribution, provided very interesting ideas for an optimal implementation of the project.

https://www.liceocopernico.edu.it/index.php/comunicazioni/archivio-news/84-news-2020-2021/841-workshopo-pulchra

1st workshop

Report

Science Reporter’s Activities

Article: we described our project and activities done until now.

We develop a web page to explain in detail our activities and achievements. A video on how to build a bug hotel is also available on you tube and in our dedicated webpage (see links below).

17th November 2021. Final event of the first city challenge

The Pulchra workshop was organised remotely and students presented their work, including results obtained and future improvements of the approach. Students prepared a video explaining how to build a bug hotel and nicely reported data collected during 3 months on pollinators, based on environmental aspects possibly affecting the use of bug hotels (e.g. presence of water in the sourroundings etc.). The Head of the Institute and environmental associations like FrondaUrbana and Semenostrum attended the workshop.

30th November 2021. International workshop “City Challenges – Open Schooling – The Cities as Urban Ecosystems”

The second international workshop of Pulchra was organised by the Charles University and TEREZA Educational Centre of Czech Republic at the end of November. Students presented their results to the event and shared experiences with other schools and international experts attending the workshop. The abstract and the presentation are attached.

Project Outcomes

first article Copernico_Pulchra

A summary of activities and data collected are available at the dedicated website Pulchra_Liceo_Copernico

Video: How to build a bug hotel_school N. Copernico_UD_Italy

Explanation of the project, photos and graphs showing the data collected are reported on the website: https://pulchra.000webhostapp.com/index.html.

Pulchra Abstract

Slides presented during the second international Pulchra workshop:

Workshop 30 11 21

Biodiversity in the city: protection of pollinators

The Science Team

School

Teachers

Participants

No of students

Students age

Status

Finished

Project description

Learn

Explore

Activate

Report

Project description

Keywords

Needs

Learn

Study/educational material

Videos

Food for thought

Explore

Support project as mentor/expert

Provide data / material / equipment for school projects

Activate

Science Teams Activities

Development Of The City Challenges

Report

Science Reporter’s Activities

Project Outcomes

PULCHRA PROJECT

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