Promoting sustainability education through hands-on approaches: a tree carbon sequestration exercise in a Singapore green space

Abstract

During a university class project related to climate change mitigation strategies, we utilized a university green space as a "living laboratory" for collaborative learning exercise to estimate landscape-level carbon biomass storage. The key objective of the exercise was to foster sustainability awareness with regard to the effectiveness of tree-planting initiatives to offset carbon emissions. Collaborative learning is a process by which students work together in small groups to accomplish a common goal. As experiences are active, social and student-owned, the process leads to the development of a variety of cognitive and transferable skills that are beneficial in academia and the workplace. Through data collection/analysis, the carbon biomass exercise not only allowed students to assess critically the efficacy of a tree-planting initiative as a means to sequester carbon, but they became aware of the difficulties in performing research on complex environmental issues. The intention of the research was to give students an opportunity to practice data collection, data analysis, problem solving, teamwork, communication and scientific literacy skills, meanwhile utilizing the campus open green space to enhance the knowledge discovery process. Informal assessment and discussions with students demonstrated that the activity was successful in reaching a wide range of students with varying backgrounds and initial attitudes about climate change mitigating strategies, which was our objective. Our case study demonstrates how learning objectives can be integrated with university sustainability initiatives to improve learning and student engagement. Finally, we see green spaces as dynamic settings for learning about physical processes and issues related to environmental management and sustainability.

5E Öğrenme Modeli Uygulamalarının Ortaokul Öğrencilerinin Akademik Başarılarına, Ekolojik Ayak İzi Farkındalıklarına ve Sürdürülebilir Çevreye Yönelik Tutumlarına Etkisi

“…In a similar study, Keleş (2007) revealed that there were positive changes in the awareness attitudes and behaviors of the teacher candidates after the ecological footprint training that he applied to the teacher candidates as an environmental education tool for sustainable living. Ramchunder and Ziegler (2021) used the green space of a university in Singapore to encourage students' awareness of sustainability through applied approaches and aimed to provide students with a deeper conceptual understanding.…”

Climate change literacy and commitment in Spanish university students

“…There are valuable initiatives that link the university campus, learning and environmental preservation, such as “The Rain Project” at George Mason University in the United States, where a floating wetland was designed and built as part of sustainable stormwater management (Changwoo, 2016). The “Living Laboratory” project at the University of Singapore is for collaborative learning through the planting of trees and their study, collecting data and analyzing them through equations to estimate the carbon biomass and contribute to the reduction of the carbon footprint (Ramchunder and Ziegler, 2021). Finally, community-based participatory research integrates different areas of knowledge and actors for research and local problem solving, as in the “Global Changes and Society Course” at the University of Utah in the United States, in which professionals from different disciplines identified research and ecological preservation needs for the reduction of human impact around Red Buttle Creek, the urban-natural transition zone and the university campus (Walsh et al.…”

Modeling place-based nature-based solutions to promote urban carbon neutrality

“…In this study, we assessed both direct and indirect pathways for NbS to achieve carbon savings goals. Direct effects such as preserving green spaces are widely reported in the literature (Li and Wang 2021;Page et al 2021;Ramchunder and Ziegler 2021), but using NbS as a potential tool for nudging and influencing human behaviors is a significant, but often overlooked, opportunity in policymaking to achieve carbon neutrality (Linder et al 2022). For example, improving streetscapes in the urban center not only contributes to transportation emission reduction but is also beneficial for fostering a walking and biking culture and building an environment-aware civil society (Ewing et al 2015;Cain et al 2017;Liu et al 2020).…”