Field Studies

Camas’s staff works with students on campus to identify limitations to ecosystem services and craft strategies to enhance function of these services.  Participants in Camas’s Community Stewardship Program discover traditional ecological knowledge regarding uses of plants and animals and the mechanisms to manage, harvest, process, and utilize these resources.

Camas’s staff will lead field studies that provide context for the work on campus and at nearby natural areas as well as support the school’s learning extended application program and associated diploma requirements. Students will measure and assess wildlife habitat (with a focus upon birds and bugs), conduct acorn surveys, measure hydrology, stormwater discharge, and resource (energy and water) usage. Students will document observations through collage and sculpture, creative and technical writing (journaling), figure drawing, and photography. They will study botany and horticulture as well as ways to utilize plants for ceremony, food, fiber, medicine, industry, and other applications. Students will conduct competition studies between native and non-native plants. Each school studies a different group of species and reports findings to fellow students and land managers alike. Students will propagate native plants (utilizing existing greenhouse facilities). Rare plants propagated as part of the field studies objective will be outplanted on properties managed by partner agencies. Students from each of the schools will share best management practices and collaborate to enhance habitat at each of their school campuses. Students will present findings from their field studies to school administrators for consideration in “greening” school infrastructure.

Through Community Stewardship students will work with tribal members from the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde and Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians (each of which provided funding to support the program in 2009-10) to cultivate plants for use in basketry, ceremony, food preparation, amongst other applications. Through this filter students will discover that people and nature are far from separate and learn that protection and stewardship of habitat in turn sustains culture.

Camas collaborates with the School Garden Project and the host schools to cultivate native hedgerows to improve pollination and propagate native plants.