Poplar Island

greencourses.net is a multi-media site for green education. We feature the work of scientists, nature advocacy groups, farmers, and historians in our greencourses. What is a green course - it can be a one minute podcast about sustainable fish eating from the Chesapeake Bay. It can also be how the Bay’s waters can be cleaned by the oyster. Go to our YouTube Channel, Green Courses to see how a teacher’s environmental class can be enhanced by our podcasts.

In the months to come we will have video courses and accompanying core curriculum for grades K-12. Our first course is Poplar Island (see left.) an island that all but disappeared in the Chesapeake Bay. It is now being restored with beneficial dredged material and inter-tidal wetlands (as shown in the picture above). A host of governmental agencies are working together to restore island habitat. This core curriculum address water quality, nesting of common terns, a study of the resurgence of the diamondback turtle, assessing the water column of the inter-coastal wetlands both day and night.

Our Podcasts bring to life the first fall of a wood duck which knows not how to fly; the surprising fact that lawn fertilization and urbanization are large pollutants of the Chesapeake Bay. Chicken farming is powered by GPS systems to manage thousands of birds before they are brought to the market. Soy bean, chicken’s main feed, is at a premium on the Eastern Shore and the agricultural use of the land is far less taxing on municipalities than human services.

As always the “net.” result is a network and we hope that you will learn and support the efforts of the scientists, advocates and farmers alike in their quest to green our earth.

Poplar Island

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Poplar Island is located in the Chesapeake Bay on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It was considered one of the Bay’s vanishing islands due to erosion, wind and rain. Since 1998, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Maryland Port Administration have joined forces with the public and private sector to restore the island to its 1840’s footprint of roughly 1140 acres.

Beneficial dredged material taken from the approach channels to the Baltimore Harbor is being placed on the island along with sand and armor stone. Cells demarcate where different tilling practices are studied to determine the best way to restore island habitat. Within the cells islets are created to attract nesting birds free from common predators like fox and muskrat.

Diamondback terrapins began nesting on the island during the first phase of constuction. Professor Willem Roosenburg is tracking terrapin incubation, nesting habits and turtle migrations. An interactive core curriculum K-12 course will be offered in the Fall 2013.

The island is an experiment. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is measuring sedimentation on Poplar Island from the mini-watersheds that are being built, adjusting elevations in the marshes, counting millimeters.

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Core Course Curriculum available Winter 2012.