Environmental Education: Using Plants

[aclinville]

I am a student at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln and I am studying Environmental Studies and Plant Biology. Right now I am in an independent plant science lab that encourages experiments on the growth of plants.

 

My overall goal with the experiment I am doing now is to test the impacts of Ethanol (E10) on common prairie plants (Common plants to Nebraska). I will be using different dilutions of the Ethanol and simply watering them on to common milkweed.

 

I want to know what the impacts of our daily live driving to and from work, to stores, and for fun can do if there happens to be runoff from the roads into the water source of our plants. That is how I came up with Ethanol; also there are a lot of studies on Diesel fuel on plants. I would like to understand the effects of the ethanol on plants as well as hopefully teach others of the impacts to create a more environmentally friendly world.

 

I believe that we can easily teach people the impacts that we have on the Earth simply by showing them that if this gets into the plants systems then they die, simple as that. Plants are a major part of our ecosystem and I believe that they need more help in being protected because if we don’t then we are going to have a bad time.

 

If anyone else has any ideas on how to improve or edit what I am doing or if anyone thinks that this is an interesting topic! Also, if you think of other ways to show how plants are good for us to use in environmental education.

[CharonY]

I am just wondering Is ethanol a significant source of contamination?