Students Conduct Climate Research With NASA Scientist

Bronxville High School students in Stephen Kovari’s Advanced Placement Environmental Science class stepped out of the classroom and into the field for a hands-on, real-world research experience at the Marshlands Conservancy in Rye on March 25. Working alongside NASA senior research scientist Dr. Dorothy Peteet, the students engaged in environmental studies – taking sediment cores, probing marsh depths and analyzing carbon storage in a wetland ecosystem.  

Dr. Peteet, an adjunct professor at Columbia University, specializes in wetland research, focusing on their carbon storage capacity and stability against climate change and rising sea levels. Kovari first collaborated with Dr. Peteet through NASA’s Climate Change Research Initiative and has since integrated the scientific partnership into his AP Environmental Science curriculum. 

“This research is incredibly relevant to our work in the class,” he said. “Students getting to connect with a NASA scientist in the field is an invaluable experience. This was a way to involve students in real, authentic research that will likely be published in a scientific journal. This is an incredible and rare opportunity for students and cannot be replicated in the classroom.”

During their fieldwork, the students took several cores up to three meters deep in multiple areas of the marsh. By studying these samples, they are helping to reconstruct the environmental history of the wetlands, analyze carbon sequestration levels, and investigate the causes of marshland loss over time. Historical maps indicate significant wetland decline in Rye, and this research could provide critical insights into ongoing environmental changes. 

Moving forward, Kovari hopes that juniors in his class will have the opportunity to visit Dr. Peteet’s lab at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Rockland County. There, they will see how the core is processed and visit the core repository. They will work to calculate total carbon storage and conduct advanced scientific tests on the core to see what it is composed of at various depths.