Vernal Pools Study at The Clifton Institute

In early April STEAM’s Nature School students headed to The Clifton Institute to help gather data on the institute’s vernal pools.

Bridget, one of the educators at Clifton, gave the students a crash course in vernal pools and the animals that use the pools. She also taught them how to collect the data they are using for their research. The star of the show are a very elusive animal called spotted salamanders. Every spring they emerge from underground and make their way to these vernal pools to mate and lay eggs.

The students broke into groups and each group had a scribe to write down their data, a physicist to get the water temperature and depth, a chemist to test the pH and look at the clarity of the water and biologist to count the egg masses and look for other life in the pools.

After the data was collected, the numbers were recorded and the students did comparison between the pools. After that, they compared data from previous years and came up with hypotheses for why the data was different. For example, the water level dropped for the last 3 years in 1 of the pools. A student thought that since the beavers created the pool by damming it up, there could be a leak in the dam.

Bridget explained how this data will be used in this long term research project that will help scientists to understand these unique ecosystems.