Category: Citizens Climate

A TREErific Day in West Reading

cvg5649Citizens Climate

 

We Speak for the Trees Group is the name of our service group. The members are Jenn Wilson, Abby Mattis, Juliana Manieri, and Christina Galvin. Each member served as a vital part of our project. Our group teamed up with Citizens’ Climate Lobby Reading to research/do service for and observe different tree species in the West Reading, Pennsylvania area to look at the different roles these tree species play in our ecosystem. We hypothesized that regardless of the tree species, each tree will play the same role in the ecosystem, giving the same benefits, in relation to the deforestation and restoration of trees. Our goal is to compare the different trees, with their different sizes, species, and areas, and ultimately see how they all give off the same ecological benefits. As a team, we have gathered multiple times in the past month or so, and discussed how we will get this project organized and developed in the most efficient way to present to our community. We have accomplished gaining knowledge on our service group, all the different tree species in the world, let alone West Reading, and finding data to gather and share with our group and school. Our next steps in our service consists of organizing what we found and how we are going to share it with the community. We gathered the data and made them into graphs, where we were able to see what each tree species brought to the community ecologically.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We learned a great deal and gained a ton of knowledge throughout this whole process that I think we can all agree, are really grateful for. Trees are such a huge part of and necessity for our ecosystem. Without them, other plants, animals, humans, and living things in general, would not be able to thrive and survive. So doing this research is extremely important to basically show that every single tree species is important and brings some ecological benefit to our planet, therefore maintaining and growing them throughout our communities are vital.

 <<One of our team meetings:)

 

 

 

 

Our Service Video: For our serve video we decided to show exactly how we researched and got our information. We were given a website to use that allows is to see all the different tree species in a certain area, in this case we studied West Reading. We were able to see the amount of each type of tree in the area, the size of each individual tree, and well has all of the ecological and environmental benefits.

 

Screen Recording 2022-04-26 at 9.00.26 PM

In addition, we also created a brochure pamphlet that is super engaging and informs the community about our research regarding Habitat Destruction and Restoration: (unfortunately the screenshots of the brochure were very blurry and can’t be read so I put a link do the document so it can still be viewed)

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XICSZ1y62hW87-99a7ESo1syKjngcnpef4BYen7CMu8/edit?usp=sharing

Our Reflection:

Using the database allowed us to gain concrete information based on the benefits of the different types of tree species in the area around us. Researching habitat destruction in relation to our service on tree species helped us gather a clear understanding of just how important trees are in our environment. Both the service and research gave us a new perspective on just how important trees are to the environment and the many benefits that these species have. We all really enjoyed this project knowing we got to help the community and an organization that is so devoted to helping the planet. 

 

Team Facts

zvb5107Citizens Climate

What up y’all,

We are Team Facts.  Our team members are Ziggy Bowles, Jose Hingada, and Kate Bieler. Here are some fun facts about each of us:

Ziggy: I play baseball and I am from Boston

Kate: I like to snowboard and I like pizza

Jose: I like doggies and I did track in high school

We are working with Citizen’s Climate Lobby and we are going to help with planting trees.

Summary Post of The Fly Team

npr5167Citizens Climate

So, as we come down to the end of the semester, our team has learned a lot from our EACAP project as well as our research project.  For our research project, our team did deforestation since we felt that it would go really well/connect with our EACAP project, which was planting trees for the Citizens Climate.  For deforestation, our team found that deforestation has been a very big concern for the environment and has been in the news for a good amount of time, especially what has happened at the Amazon Rainforest.  The 2 biggest facts that our group found about deforestation was that forests cover a big part of our planet and those trees provide food, water, and air for everyone, including animals, where almost 80% of animals live in forests.  Another fact was that some 13.2 million people across the world have a job in the forest sector and another 41 million have a job that is related to the sector.  Seeing these 2 facts, it made us think that if these trees keep getting cut down for different uses to where they aren’t replanted, everyone, including animals, will be affected and have loss of habitats and many other things too.  So, our biggest thing that we got out of this that we would hope everyone does is that if you cut a tree down, plant another tree as well as go paperless to help preserve a tree from getting cut down.

For our EACAP project, our team worked with the Citizens Climate Lobby Reading Berks-Chapter to help plant trees for different homeowners in Reading.  We planted two different trees, one was the Amelanchier ‘Autumn Brilliance Serviceberry’ and the other one was the Cercis ‘Eastern Redbud’.  Going into it, we kind of had an idea of what it would be like and planting a tree did not seem too bad, but after we planted all the trees, we saw that there is a lot more to planting a tree than the simple steps of digging a hole and planting that tree.  Trees are very important, especially native trees, to the environment because they help with climate change, help with wildlife, etc. After the project was over, this was a great experience and it allowed us to really understand why planting trees are so important and why they shouldn’t be cut down.  Our thoughts on this whole project and what we gained from it are that this is a great experience for anyone that really loves the environment or anyone really that wants to get out and do something for it that really makes you contribute to helping the environment.  The environment has been a big concern in the news and doing something for it to help it is what everyone should be doing now and this project really shows that and contributes to doing that.  What our message would be to other individuals is to be active in helping out the environment because many animals depend on the environment and keeping it safe is what everyone should be doing.  Just by doing something little for the environment will make you a contributor to helping keep the environment safe so that is what our message would be.  Once again, this has been a great experience for us and hope that more people start doing more for the environment to keep it safe.

Greener Things Summary Post

lms6856Citizens Climate

For our project we assisted the Reading arborist, Lester Kissinger, with planting trees around the city. We also are making a pamphlet to help spread awareness for Reading’s adopt a tree program. Through adopt a tree residents can choose from a list of tree species and apply to have trees planted on their property, but then the residents have to care for the tree. We helped plant five native trees, and we never anticipated the plantings to be as fun as they were. I also expected the plantings to be harder, but with teamwork and the guidance of Lester, it was a lot easier. We also learned a lot about how to plant trees, like how to give the trees the best chance of doing well by scoring their roots. We all gained the experience of planting trees, had a great day while planting. I believe that everyone should go outside and do something for the environment and ourselves such as planting trees.

Greener Things planting Trees in Reading!

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Rinna, Allie, and I were joined by Derek, Alex, and Nick, who were also planting trees. We also were joined by the Reading arborist, Lester Kissinger, and also Jean and Marilyn, who all assisted in teaching us about the trees and planting. We planted these trees on November the third, and they all were native trees. Native trees are much better for the environments they reside in. We all had a good time planting trees and how to plant them so they can successfully grow.

Two more trees were born at Chestnut Street Side, Reading

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Here is a victory post of our two EACAP teams finishing planting one of the trees at Chestnut Street, Reading.

The name of the tree in the photo is Amelanchier ‘Autumn Brilliance Serviceberry’. It is a long name, we know. We also planted a Cercis ‘Eastern Redbud’ at the same location.

When we were planting these two trees, we encountered some problems: there were roots underground that prevented us to plant. Lester, one of the people from Citizens Climate, had to use a chainsaw to cut it open to remove them.

It was a little rough journey to find these two trees a new home but we did it!