About GLOBE ONE

GLOBE ONE is a field campaign that partners students and scientists to investigate the impacts of tilling soil for farming. The campaign is taking place in Black Hawk County, Iowa and will be looking at a variety of aspects of the environment, from how much rain and snow fall in northeastern Iowa throughout the year, to the properties of local streams and soil, to how plants and animals change as the seasons change.

Hummingbird scientist Bill Hilton, Jr. teaches GLOBE ONE students in Iowa

GLOBE ONE scientists are interested in tillage for a variety of reasons. They have questions, such as: How different are air temperatures over tilled and no-till fields? Does the amount of soil that is washed away by rain vary between tilled and non-tilled fields? Does tilling affect whether hummingbirds will use a field for their habitat? These scientists will work cooperatively with students and other members of the local community to collect and analyze data to be able to get some insight into these questions.

The impact of soil tillage on the global environment is an interesting and timely topic. A recent New York Times article reported that altering soil tillage techniques could possibly serve to reduce global warming. Since GLOBE ONE students and scientists are looking so many aspects of the environment, they are able to have a main research question that is quite broad in scope, namely: For corn and soybeans, what are the environmental impacts associated with different frequencies and intensities of soil tillage farming, and with different amounts of crop residue left after planting as compared to prairie and urban sites?

GLOBE Iowa Coordinator Marcy Seavey presents with GLOBE ONE Students at a community meeting.

Black Hawk County, Iowa provides a great location for the field campaign. Black Hawk County has the required field sites, and is also home to one of GLOBE's outstanding partners, Marcy Seavey. Seavey is building a network of capable schools and community resources for this project.

Most of the data will by collected by students and volunteers working in collaboration with scientists. GLOBE ONE and GLOBE Iowa are supplying an infrastructure for community and partner aid to help support these schools and volunteers. Since this field campaign will directly involve students in a scientific investigation, it will provide a solid showcase for GLOBE's capabilities. It will not only address the immediate pressing need of providing a solid GLOBE dataset and publication record; it will also provide a model on which future scientific projects involving GLOBE can be based.

The involvement of GLOBE ONE scientists and local scientists with the schools may have tremendous impact on the accessibility of science as a career choice in addition to the overall attitude students have toward the nature of science. The National Science Education Standards for Professional Development of teachers include involving teachers in authentic research as a means of improving science education in their classroom. Teachers who have had research experience can positively affect the environment for learning science in their classrooms (Caton et al., 2000; Johnson, 2002; Odom, 2001). Teachers and their students in GLOBE ONE will contribute to real science investigations of the effects of land use change on components of the Earth System.

Further resources on GLOBE ONE that you may want to check out are:

1. The GLOBE ONE one-page handout! (pdf)
2. Chief Scientist Peggy LeMone's overview of GLOBE ONE (ppt)
3. John McLaughlin's presentation of GLOBE ONE at the GLOBE Annual Conference (ppt)

For more information on GLOBE ONE, please email Peggy Lemone of the GLOBE Science Team.

Visit The GLOBE Program Website