Laura Schoenle
Salpointe Catholic High School
Wildfire and Bird Habitat: discovering the relationship between the fire return interval and the abundance of open woodland bird s
Q. Tell us a about your school.
I'm at Salpointe Catholic High School, a private parochial school of about 1,200 students. I teach AP biology and, as of next year, environmental science. This fall will be my third year.
Q. What has been the most exciting aspect of your research?
I went to the ESRI International Conference in San Digeo. It's sponsored by Geography Information Systems, and I got to see what a lot of other people were doing with computer mapping. That was tremendously exciting. I didn't get to go into the field this summer, but I spent all of my time wrapping my head around how to do the calculations in order to estimate bird abundance and how to use the mapping software.
Q. How do you plan to bring this to the classroom?
I've been excited thinking about setting up an internship with upper-level students and bringing them to the research, as opposed to bringing the research to them. They would do an internship with me next summer collecting field data. I'm thinking two to four students, because I don't know if I'll be able to handle more than that. I will select students who are deeply interested in research and who want to give it a try. I'll train them and then have them work in pairs to collect the data, and then I'll go through the analysis with them.
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