Divya Kumar
News Editor

As part of a year-long, sustained project, the Environmental Science students have been working on the restoration of a Blackland Prairie near the Coppell Nature Park. A portion of this project requires these students to visit the prairie periodically to collect data samples and to observe it over periods of time. Though there has been one mass-field trip in the past for all the students, since then, smaller groups have been traveling. Today, the IB Environmental Science class is participating in such a field trip.

Earlier in the year, the Coppell Environmental Science classes were awarded a grant to work on the prairie. Since then, they have been visiting the park to collect data. Today, the IB Environmental Science students are visiting to restore native plants back to the prairie by doing research data of what’s there, while comparing this data with the one that they collected earlier in the year. In addition to this, students are mapping everything and figuring out the geographical location of all the landmarks that later in class they can use technology to discover what it looked like in the past.

After today’s trip, the students will be bringing back the data they collected at the park and analyze the results. Hopefully the findings they discover will help propel them towards the next step in the restoration of the prairie, though it is likely that field trips will continue for years to come as the project develops.