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.
