The forest and climate change: example of application in open science schooling

Abstract

This work is an application of Open Science Schooling (OSS) where schools, in cooperation with other stakeholders, become an agent of community well-being; families are encouraged to become real partners in school life and activities; professionals from enterprise, civil and wider society are actively involved in bringing real-life projects into the classroom. Specifically, it has been working with a European project: Project Erasmus+ Open Science Schooling: Fostering re-engagement in science learning through open science schooling. Developed at the secondary school Pere Fontdevila in Gironella, a direct application of OSS has been carried out around the forest. Secondary school youth work forest as a key element in the fight against the climate change and study its role in energy saving. In a first phase of awareness of the magnitude of their role in energy saving, the students have been taking part of an action named SAVEnergy. The project SAVEnergy is promoted by Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya through the research group EXPLORATORI: natural resources. It has been installed a device that measures the electric consumption at the electric board at home of every student participating in the project. The goal is become aware of energy consumption at their own homes. From this point, and to be able to extrapolate individual energy saving and pass globally, students have worked on CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. For this reason, a study of the emissions from Spanish State since 2007 to 2017 has been carried out, applying statistical techniques. In addition, to saving energy and get to know how to study the effect of this savings on a global level, students have closed the cycle studying a source of renewable energy from the forest: biomass. To put their knowledge into practice and learn through the experience they have built a biomass boiler in the form of a prototype. Studying how to fight the climate change through the forest it is essential talk about Agenda 2030. The framework of this project is the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 4: Quality Education and the SDG number 13: The climate action. The activities mentioned are also in relation with the SDG 7: Affordable and clean energy and the SDG 12: Responsible consumption and production. Taking into account the fact that the forest might seem like a distant space in the day to day of the students, it has been desired to work on the vegetation that really surrounds them: the urban woodland. This issue has been related to the SDG 3: Good health and well-being. Nowadays it is fashionable to say that the trees in the cities improve the health of the population. The trees, besides beautifying a city, provide fresh and clean air that help in the physical and mental health of its inhabitants. For these reasons, they must be thought as a public health infrastructure. In order to work about this topic, the students are now doing a study about the wooded areas in 2 cities with different size: Berga and Manresa. This work is related with the SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities.