The education goal of Climate Research Laboratory is to become an International Open Center for educational purposes on Climate Research and Global Change on both formal and non-formal education.

In CarboSchools+, LRC-PCB is closely working with Fundació Escoles Tr@ms, an association of schools concerned with science teaching in their classes, trying to implement Carbon Cycle and Global Change disciplines in their science curricula. A site of CO₂-Schoolweb European network is going to be established as a focal point to meet scientist, teachers and students together. Moreover, the Natural Sciences Section of the Mataró Museum (http://www.scn-mm.cat/) is going to hold another CO₂ measurement site. It is going to be a focal point of non-formal discussions about the Global Change issues, always with the concurrence of scientist involved in this research field. An exhibition about the CarboSchools+ project and the Science of Carbon Cycle and Global Change will provide a context for the CO₂ measurements obtained in the Mataró city center.

LRC-PCB is looking for collaboration with more teachers and schools, and it is having success. By now, teachers associated with the “Seminari Permanent de Ciències Naturals”, some of them participants in the last EGU GIFT meeting in Vienna, are interested in CS+. Currently, LRC-PCB meets them to develop activities where scientist-teachers-students learn to make science together!

In Groningen, we have a network of teachers who regularly come together on the university to design new student projects for the science subjects in cooperation with scientists. Within this network we formed a group of people who work on the schoolCO2web and the carbon cycle. Last year they worked on a module for a new science subject: Nature, Life and Technology. Moreover, they came up with different ideas for “profile projects”. These are projects for the higher grades in which pupils design and carry out their own research. The teachers aim to guide pupils towards projects focused on atmospheric measurements, plant respiration in a closed box and the carbon footprint. Pupils have the possibilities to do a part of their project on the university.

Within the CarboSchools project, we will cooperate with our project partners in order to expand the SchoolCO2web to a European scale. We believe that the enrichment of this network will not only create a valuable resource for student projects and even scientific research. It is also a way to create a community in which European pupils, teachers and scientists will cooperate together on expanding knowledge on climate change.

Another important goal in CarboSchools is to evaluate how pupils experience working on projects about climate science. Does their attitude towards climate change and science change after doing these projects? To answer these questions, postdoc Sibel Telli will design evaluation tools to investigate the impact of our efforts.

In the context of CarboSchools, we will use all our experience to facilitate links between local secondary schools and local carbon scientists (from the highly regarded University of East Anglia’s School of Environmental Science (UEA), website of UEA) so that the projects they undertake have Carbon science at their core. They will be planned jointly by teacher and scientist.

TSN will also be contributing partner schools to CO₂-web.

More details of all these projects can be found at
this link.

Should you be based in the UK and wish to take part please contact Dr. Phil Smith, TSN Coordinator (phil.smithALTbbsrc.ac.uk). Through our involvement with Researchers in Residence we can facilitate links between researchers and schools across the UK (website of "Researchers in residence")

A successful “Pioneer” Project: School Year 2007/08

For francophones, you can learn more about this fantastic project by visiting Lycée Max Linder's CarboSchools web page

And so far this school year 2008/09
The two research units are currently working with seven secondary schools in and around Bordeaux. These are divided more or less equally between the two research laboratories EPHYSE and EPOC.

Those working with Ephyse are carrying out projects similar to and developed from that of the school Max Linder (2007/08): for example, a visit to an INRA experimental site, the maritime pine forest “Le Bray” and in order to explore its role in carbon uptake and to consequently study the physical functioning and modelling of sensors and their data. Activities with the unit EPOC include measuring CO₂ fluxes in-situ at different aquatic surfaces; working on water samples taken from the rivers or lakes; and visiting EPOC’s measuring stations on the Dordogne or the Garonne River.

Visit our regional website to find out more about these projects

We are also participating in the SchoolCO2web project. Visit the SchoolCO2web page to compare CO₂ emissions and climate at Max Linder school in Libourne with other schools in Europe.

Contact:
Regional coordinator: Stephanie Hayes
Stephanie.hayes(at)bordeaux.inra.fr

The past
During the school year 2006-2007, the LSCE managed already a large project with secondary schools in this area. On the subject « Carbon cycle and global change », classrooms from 11 schools (representing more than 200 pupils, from 11 years old to 17) worked, for periods ranging from one month to all year long, in a close collaboration with the LSCE. Some classes visited the laboratory for two or three hours. A dozen of LSCE researchers participated to the project by punctual actions.

During the school year 2007-2008, activities with 10 secondary schools took place with the same approach, but with the GEOMon project and the IPSL. This year, works on models and on data about the carbon cycle were more developed.

At the end of each scholar year, students came to present their results in front of their colleagues and a jury. The jury rewarded best works with prices of 100 or 200 Euros.

The present
For the scholar year 2008-2009, we are working at least with a network of 20 schools (see the map). LSCE borrows a CO₂ sensor to the 20 schools to realise a daily measure for several months. Schools of the network will also share studies of each carbon compartment relationships, trying by this way to reproduce a scientific network. At the end of the year, a meeting will take place to compare results. More than 400 pupils are expected to come. Resources are published in an official website for teachers (in French) to help them to manage experiments by themselves. Laboratory visits and visits of scientists in classrooms will be shared between all the IPSL laboratories.

Some projects are also in place with individual schools: from 6 to 10.

CarboSchools in Kiel (in English) (Auf Deutsch)

Activity in southern Italy, Campania region, Benevento province
"Sustainable conservation agriculture as a tool to mitigate greenhouse effect"

Benevento province is a mid-southern hilly-mountain area. Agriculture is the main activity, with a big number of little family-farms that cultivate a high percentage of the area. For centuries, traditional agriculture has been contributing to the management of this articulated territory. Modern "intensive" agriculture, on the contrary, has exposed in the last decades the agrarian soils to a real over-use, with the consequence of problems of erosion, landslides and strong organic matter losses. 
IbiMet-CNR works in this area since 2003, with several research projects dealing with calibration of action models for sustainable rural development. In this frame, sustainable agriculture techniques have been studied and developed all over the territory.

Sustainable conservation agriculture vs. traditional ways of cultivating lands
Modern intensive agriculture can strongly contribute to increase CO₂ emissions. Emissions are originated directly and indirectly by agriculture and quite always these emissions are higher than the CO₂  taken up by the photosyntesis. Tractors burn gasoil and fertilizers are produced using petrol, and this contributes to direct emissions of CO₂, expecially when people uses to plough deeply the soils and uses big quantities of fertilizers. Soil Organic Matter (S.O.M.) is an important element of the fertility. It contributes to the soil structure, provides minerals and conserves humidity. S.O.M. is composed by plant rests (leaves, rooths, parts of the harvest...); it results from the photosyntesis, so it is composed mainly by carbon. Before of the modern agriculture, at the beginning of the 20th century, agrarian soils were composed for more than 5-7% by Organic Matter. Modern intensive agriculture, expecially in marginal conditions (slopes, mountains, heavy soils...), has determined a huge oxydation of this soil O.M., with the result of big emissions of CO₂ (millions of tons/year in the world) (still in progress) and the consequence of strong reduction in soil fertility.
Conservation agriculture, reducing energy inputs, can contribute to reduce agrarian CO₂ emissions directly (less gasoil and fertilizers use) and indirectly (supporting the strorage of CO₂ in the soils in the form of O.M.). 

Conservation agriculture: the sod seeding system
Sod Seeding (S.S.) is a conservative way to cultivate cereals and erbaceous corps. It’s widely used in south America (from more than 20 years) and, from few time, in some regions of Europe too. SodSeeding, also named Direct Seeding or No tillage  is a technique that doesn’t need any kind of preparing soil tillages. It’s carried out with a special machine that, with a special system of disks, opens on closes in the soils thin furrows in which seeds go placed. It can be used on soils just after the cereal harvest, directly on grasslands or on “set aside” soils. Literature data show that this thecnique, if applied in a sustainable way, can sobstitute traditional modern agriculture, with good productions (comparable to the traditional ones) and interesting soil fetility betterments in the years. Together with a rational and/or dedicated management of cultivation residues, actually, SodSeeding system can contribute to increase soil O.M. content, with good results in terms of soil structure and mineral composition. Erosion and landslides risks (expecially in slope agriculture) can result reduced such as CO2 emissions. Avoiding soil tillages, actually, this technique reduces soil O.M. oxydation (that’s the cause of strong CO₂ emissions) and contributes its storage in the soils. This way, agrarian soils have the potentiality to change from CO₂ “sources” to CO₂ “sinks”, also in consideration of the low energy inputs used for the whole production cycle. And this can also have considerable large-scale effects, considernig the huge world agrarian surfaces. If (theoretically) the 186 million Ha of the USA agrarian land would be put under SodSeeding technique, 4.3 mln of tons of CO₂ emission would be avoided every year (Frye, 1984).
Moreover SodSeeding tecnique is suitable for farmers because improves production efficiency, reduces times and, in the long period, also the need in fertilizers.

The starting point of CS+ planned activity is that SodSeeding technique (but in general conservation agriculture) can contribute to mitigate greenhouse effect getting positive or more positive the overall CO₂ cultivation balance. This looks like a good way to reduce environmental CO₂ emissions and also to remove from atmosphere, in the long-period, interesting quantity of CO₂.
These elements have been considered interesting for the students of two Benevento’s vocational secondary schools: IPSAA “Vetrone” (vocational school for agriculture) and IIS “Alberti” (vocational school for chemistry and environment).
Experimental fields have been prepared in IPSAA’s farm to analyse the effect of the Sod Seeding technique in comparison with the traditional agricultural techniques and to estimate the potential for greenhouse effect mitigation. IPSAA’s students are involved in agrarian aspects studies (crops growth, soil fertlity, weeds...) and, on the other hand, IIS’s students are involved in instrumental analysis about soil gas exchange, with specia attention to CO₂.
Different proofs will be prepared to show to the students how science can contribute directly to concrete things (i.e. agriculture) and how a simple way of making agriculture can contribute to mitigate greenhouse effect and to develop farms and territory.

So; how and why do temperature, oxygen, and inorganic carbon vary throughout the water column, which plankton species are abundant in the areas at different times, which species are living at the bottom of a shallow fjord compared to a deep fjord, are the fjords sink or source areas for atmospheric carbon dioxide, and how does ocean acidification affect marine life? These questions require hypothesis, data sampling, careful laboratory analysis, data processing, writing reports, and presenting the results – and this is similar to how the scientists work. So by being involved in this collaboration the students not only learn about marine chemistry/ physics/biology in relation to climate change, they also learn the scientific way of thinking and working.

Additional aspects of these cruises are of course the pre-phase of planning and preparing, in addition to safety and instruments on board the research vessel.

Contact
Dr. Stela Maria Cuna
National Institute for Research and Development of Isotopic and Molecular Technologies
65 -103 Donath Str.P.O.Box 700
Cluj-Napoca 400293 ROMANIA
Phone: +40 264 584037 Fax: +40 264 420042
Mobile: 0040741140347
cuna@oc1.itim-cj.ro