McKnight Mini-Grant
Project Summaries
The
Intistute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Mark Muller
[email protected]
The Institute for Agriculture and
Trade Policy promotes resilient family farms, rural
communities and ecosystems through research and education,
science and technology, and advocacy.
A primary issue is use of nitrogen
fertilizer in the Mississippi River basin and its
contribution to some significant environmental problems,
particularly the growth of the hypoxia zone in the
Gulf of Mexico. Excessive use of nitrogen has also
fostered the overproduction of farm commodities and
lowered farm prices. Some of that nitrogen ends up
in groundwater, contaminating the drinking water for
rural residents. Then, as the excess nitrogen eventually
flows down the Mississippi River, it contributes to
a growing hypoxia zone that could threaten the viability
of the Gulf shrimp harvest.
In efforts to address this issue,
we used our McKnight funded HECUA mini-grant award
to produce a fact sheet that assesses the relationship
between nitrogen fertilizer and hypozia in the Gulf
of Mexico. These fact sheets will be used as public
and community education materials in order to address
the overuse of nitrogen fertilizer.
Center
for Global Environmental Education, Hamline University
Peggy Knapp
[email protected]
The Center for Global Environmental
Education at Hamline University is a leading innovator
in elementary through graduate level environmental
education. Their mission is to foster environmental
literacy and stewardship in citizens of all ages.
CGEE specializes in combining environmental
education with cutting-edge distance learning technology,
while integrating hands-on learning to build community
among students and teachers world-wide. Delivering
graduate-level coursework to educators is one important
way that the Center`s vision is realized. As an integral
part of the Graduate School of Education, CGEE also
brings together faculty and staff who are committed
to environmental and science education in order to
work on service-oriented projects funded by foundations,
corporations, government and private donors.
We used McKnight funded HECUA mini-grant
money to produce a video documentary of the Interactive
Expedition, a week long river trip of discovery led by a crew of five high school
students, and the
culminating event in the Rivers of Life/Audubon
Ark Mississippi Adventure 2002.
Rivers of Life
is an interdisciplinary K-12 watershed education program
that fosters an understanding of how human and natural
systems work together. CGEE`s premier online program, the Rivers
of Life/Audubon Ark Mississippi Adventure 2002 is
a ten-week program that gives teachers the tools,
resources and support they need to put core math,
science, and cultural curriculum into the context
of their local watershed.
During the Mississippi Adventure 2002,
as CGEE offers
an investigation of the Mississippi River as a model,
students investigate their own watershed to understand
how their community lives and works with, and within,
their local environment.
As their study progresses, students identify
an issue that offers an opportunity for a community
service project that improves the natural system that
sustains their community.
University
of St. Thomas Geography Department
Professor David Kelley
[email protected]
The
Geography Department at the University of St. Thomas
is engaged in research concerning the Wellhead Protection
Zones and the elimination of contamination of drinking
water aquifers by nitrates. Recently completed research
identified the need to improve the quality and site-specificity
of extension education materials used by county agricultural
extension offices and soil and water conservation
districts in Lincoln and Pipestone counties.
Extension
personnel working in wellhead protection zones in
SW Minnesota have expressed a need for easily-understood
visual aids that they can use to spread the results
of this research and better serve their mission to
protect local water resources. This grant was designed
to help them with their efforts to educate the farming
community in these sensitive areas to adopt improved
land management techniques.
The
McKnight funded HECUA mini-grant was used to employ
two undergraduate students in Geography at the University
of St. Thomas to produce maps and visual aids that
extension personnel can take to county field days
or individual farms. I have identified two students
who are willing to undertake the task of developing
maps for the Holland wellfield with the datalayers
that we have currently in our possession. We will
have to wait for the Verdi wellfield data sets that
are outstanding. The students can begin compiling
the map layers after the academic year ends on May
17. I anticipate that these maps can be completed
by the end of May, and that we will have the remainder
of the data layers in our possession by June. The
revised completion date for this project is June 30,
2002.
St.
John`s University, Environmental Studies Program
Derek Larson
The Environmental Studies program
of the College of St. Benedict/St. John`s University
planned an experimental Earth Week series of events
this spring to gauge local interest in environmental
issues and related programming.
Over the course of the week from April 15-22nd,
the College of St. Benedict/St. John`s University
offered over two dozen Earth Week related presentations,
films, service projects, and other educational activities
to an estimated total of 500+ people.
Among these events were:
- Five
evening presentations on pressing environmental
issues
- A
panel discussion with representatives of several
MN environmental groups
- A
keynote address by a distinguished speaker on water
issues
- Three
tree planting projects
- A
tire clean-up project (in cooperation with Stearns
County Parks)
- An
Earth Day drawing contest in several local schools
- Two
outdoor picnics with environmental themes
- Distribution
of 300 red/white pine seedlings in the community
- Distribution
of 1,000 pencils made of recycled denim and carrying
an ecological message
- Sales
of organic cotton and hemp t-shirts and tote bags
on campus
- A
haircut-a-thon that raised over $600 in donations
for environmental groups
- A used clothing drive that donated many boxes of teen-appropriate
clothes to a local shelter
- A
new annual ceremony celebrating spring that drew
over 100 participants
Our environmental studies program
made a number of important new contacts as a result
of these events that we hope will foster future cooperative
projects, internships for our students, and other
beneficial results. Many students became involved in designing
their own service projects and the event more or less
mushroomed as the planning went along. The McKnight
funded HECUA mini-grant was critical to our success
as they allowed us to purchase items (the trees in
particular) that we may not have otherwise found funding
for.
The objectives of the Upper Mississippi
River Campaign of the Audubon Society are three fold:
1) Inform people about the ecological significance
of the Upper Mississippi River and its watershed for
birds, fish, wildlife, habitat and humans; 2) Take
direct action at selected urban, rural and natural
places on the river and its watershed, resulting in
definitive protection of existing habitat and restoring
habitat that has been lost.; 3) Influence public decisions
and actions that affect the quality of the water,
health of the soil and the ecological value of habitat
in the river, its floodplain, on riparian lands and
bluff lands, and the landscapes of the watershed.
With funds from HECUA and our own
funds, Audubon provided the staff resources to prepare
a series of draft working papers and then combine
them into a single document entitled Finding Balance
A new vision for the Lands, Communities, and Future
of the Upper Mississippi River. The
document was published in early March. With a separate grant a partner group,
Sustain, a nonprofit design firm, did the final graphics
and coordinated and paid for the printing of 5000
copies of the full-color document.
The document proved very effective
as a communications and educational tool for a diverse
audience of farmers, river navigation representatives,
environmental group members, community leaders and
resource managers.
Many people commented that it was clear and
easy to understand, made the point well about the
connection between the river and the watershed and
shows how to think about the future in terms of sustainability
from all three perspectives - economic, ethical and
environmental.
