For nearly 20 years, students at Tewksbury Memorial High School (TMHS) have contributed to climate change research as part of the Harvard Forest Schoolyard Ecology program, Buds, Leaves, and Global Warming. Since 2005, when former teacher Elaine Senechal joined the effort, TMHS has built the longest-running school dataset in the program, tracking tree phenology, or the timing of seasonal life cycle events like leaf-out and leaf drop, to understand how climate affects growing seasons.
The Buds, Leaves, and Global Warming project was inspired by observations made in the 1990s by Harvard Forest ecologist John O’Keefe, who noticed seasonal shifts in trees at the Forest. Today, data collected by TMHS students feed into a database used by scientists to assess long-term trends, which shows a growing season that appears to be lengthening.
Despite changes to the landscape such as original trees lost to construction and new ornamental species being excluded from the study, TMHS students have kept the research going. Science teacher Patrick Cassidy now leads the program, which has been a favorite among students for its hands-on, outdoor learning.
Katharine Hinkle, Manager of Youth Education at Harvard Forest and coordinator of the Schoolyard Ecology program, recognizes the value of the Tewksbury students’ dataset not only for its contributions to current climate research, but also for its inspiration to the students who have collected it over the years. “We are so thrilled that Tewksbury has been our longest running participant — 19 years. We work with hundreds of schools, and having this hyperlocal response helps students see the impacts right in front of their eyes,” Hinkle said in a recent interview with the Tewksbury Town Crier.
