EcoWISER New Mexico

  The Bosque Education Guide is a curriculum to teach about the Middle Rio Grande Valley ecosystem. It has over 600 pages of background and activities for elementary through high school. The main activity has students set up a paper and cloth model of the river valley, placing plants and animals in the appropriate environments to show the bosque ecosystem as it was before major human alteration, then changing the pieces around to show how humans have changed things in the last century. Finally, students conduct restoration projects on the model to see how land managers can maintain as much of the biodiversity and natural processes of the ecosystem with out compromising the safety of our communities. The Guide has many activities to be done with students on field trips as well as in the classroom or schoolyard. Topics include, the geology of the valley, surface and groundwater, the demands on the river's water budget, natural history information and human influence, several mapping activities and two web quests. The final chapter helps teachers plan service-learning projects with their students. A substantial background section and appendices including correlations to the New Mexico education standards round out the book. Many activities were recently translated into Spanish.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  P&A - Wildlife

  P&A - Birds

  P&A - Insects

  P&A - Reptiles & amphibians

  P&A - Aquatic wildlife

  P&A - Native plants

  P&A - Ecosystems (e.g. prairie, pine forest, bosque, riparian)

  P&A - Endangered species

  P&A - Invasive species

  ES&NRP - Water quality and quantity

  ES&NRP - Groundwater

  ES&NRP - Geology & soil

  ES&NRP - Fire ecology

  ES&NRP - Land & watershed health

  PE - Acequias

  PE - Cultural ecology

  PE - Farming & gardening

  PE - Water rights

  Curriculum/Activity guide

  Web-based activities

  Teacher training

Various timeframes

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Spanish

Yes