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The Bay Area Historical Ecology Project
History Maps Watersheds
With the support of the Center for Ecoliteracy, San
Francisco Estuary Institute staff and local educators are working
together to learn how to translate the EcoAtlas
into practical classroom materials for exploring local landscape
change. The project will help SFEI make the information developed
through our watershed science efforts into a packet of watershed-specific
maps, photography, text, and artwork, which can be delivered to
local educational institutions and programs for distribution and
use.
During the past four years, artists and scientists from SFEI
have developed richly detailed historical and modern views of
Bay Area landscapes. Early maps, paintings, photographs, journals,
and oral histories have been assembled to illustrate the native
landscape of local watersheds and 200 years of change.
Our goal is to bring this wealth of environmental information
into local communities through teachers, students, and community
leaders. We have chosen to start with teachers in the neighboring
communities of Wildcat Creek.
The first project took place in the Wildcat
Creek Watershed, during August of 1998, with educators from
Dover Elementary School, Downer Elementary School, Chavez Elementary
School, Kensington Elementary School, Mira Vista Elementary School,
Richmond High School, Verde Elementary School, and the Friends
of the Estuary/Richmond High Creekkeeper Program.
We attracted teachers who together represented many grade levels
and disciplines, including language arts, history, and environmental
sciences. These teachers created tools for teaching about the
land and the life it supports. Historical and modern materials
were used as starting places for studying local natural history
and the histories of people and neighborhoods. They were also
used to show how form relates to function in drawing and painting,
geography and biology and in advanced studies of ecology and land
management at the secondary school level.
The Summer Institute on History Maps and Watersheds was an exciting
opportunity for teachers to share their knowledge about teaching
with scientists and visual artists who are anxious to help develop
watershed art and science in classrooms.
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