Storm Callers: Research Presentation BRANDON HATTCASSIE CORMIEREDWARD THOMER

Objectives  Organization: Glenside  Fall Fest  Math/Science Fest  Intro to Pesticides  Pesticide Consequences  Solutions to Pesticides

Glenside Elementary School  Created activities involving the environment  Participated in 2 festivals  Fall Fest  Math/Science Fest

Glenside: Fall Fest  Festival focused on the fall and changing season  Set up a leaf rubbing activity  children chose a leaf and used tracing paper  encouraged to guess their tree  presented facts about trees

Glenside: Math/Science Fest  Requested to find an environment game with math and/or science  Created a math lily pad game  Numbers on each lily pad  Children had to find the proper path to the solution

Insect Pesticides Intro

Consequences of Pesticides  Pesticides have one intention in our environment: to kill anything that is living  Originally introduced back in 1952 in India (the use of pesticides)  India is now the 2nd largest manufacturer of pesticides in the world  Starting to kill off worms in dirt but worms naturally maintain pest population and keep soil healthy  Also reducing phosphorus and nitrogen, which keeps soil healthy, and allows plants to grow

Consequences (cont.)  Pesticides also are negatively impacting children’s central nervous system development  Children’s immune systems are not fully developed either, which poses a threat on how they fight off the introduction to deadly pesticides  Study conducted that found a link between children with ADHD and exposure to pesticides

Consequences (cont.)  Lastly, the bee population is dropping significantly due to pesticides  Roughly 30% of the bee population has dropped since 2006  They are extremely vital in pollinating, in fact about ⅓ of plants depend on bees including foods like chocolate, almonds, and peaches  More people need to become more cautious and aware of the use of pesticides around us on a daily basis

Solutions Biological forms of pest control protect crops without the harmful effects of pesticides Two primary forms use of other organisms cropping techniques

Use of Organisms Ants can be used as a predator to attack harmful pests. higher crop yields higher quality produce Entomopathogenic fungi can be used to kill the pests. more research needed can lead to the development of strains these strains can target specific species of insects

Cropping Techniques Crop rotation this method changes the location crops are planted each season Trap cropping uses a decoy crop to draw harmful insects away from the main money producing crop Intercropping multiple crops are planted in the same field this confuses the insects and makes it harder for them to attack their target crop

Questions?