A Day in the Life of …

AP Environmental Students

Thirty-one Sayville AP Environmental Science students synchronized their efforts with 1,000 students from other school districts during the second annual A Day in the Life of the Carmans River, Peconic Estuary and Nissequogue River event.

A Day in the Life of … is designed to celebrate the river and estuary ecosystems and educate participants about the uniqueness of Long Island's NY State-designated Wild and Scenic rivers.   

Scheduled this year on September 24, environmental education partners and students convened on the same day to collect scientific information all along the river, analyze it, and share it so as to portray the status of the river and estuary ecosystem. The objective of teaming with the school classes along all three River’s and Estuary was to create a day-in-the-life picture of the ecosystems from the headwaters to the mouth.

While the Sayville students and their AP teacher Sonja Anderson, accompanied by Sayville Science Research Teacher Maria Brown, actually participated by working at the satellite site at Green's Creek in Sayville, the students still coordinated their activities with the other students who went to Carmans River. At each site, the groups of students incorporated hands-on field techniques to describe their sites, catch fish in nets, collect water and invertebrate samples, develop a biodiversity inventory of the riparian zone and analyze water chemistry. The Sayville students enjoyed examining the physical and chemical aspects of the local ecosystem, such as where freshwater and salty seawater meet, the amount of sediments in the water and turbidity and oxygen levels, as well as conducted biodiversity inventories of the flora and fauna in and around the ecosystems.

“Our Sayville students loved being part of a bigger project,” their AP Teacher remarked,  “and the information collected will be published online. This event is coordinated by the Central Pine Barrens Commission, Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Portal to Discovery, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Suffolk County Water Authority,” Ms. Anderson added, quoting information she had obtained about a program that included many environmental groups, such as Trout Unlimited, Cornell Cooperative Extension, NY State Parks, USGS, Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge, Peconic Estuary Program, Group for the East End, Long Island Aquarium, Long Island Science Center, Sweetbriar Nature Center, Long Island Sound Study, NY Sea Grant, East Hampton Shellfish Hatchery, The Nature Conservancy, Girl Scouts of Suffolk County, the Brook trout Coalition, and the South Fork Natural History Museum and Nature Store.