Springfield, Ohio - Wittenberg University and the Clark County Park District will be joining forces to present the area's first-ever BioBlitz on Friday, Sept. 30, and Saturday, Oct. 1.

"A gathering of biological experts, students, volunteers and the community, BioBlitz offers the opportunity to sample and identify all of the biological diversity within the Clark County Park District in a 24-hour time period. All members of the community are welcome to participate.

The event will begin at 2 p.m. Friday and run until 2 p.m. Saturday and will be headquartered at George Rogers Clark Park, located at 930 S. Tecumseh Road in Springfield. There will be activities for children of all ages, including crafts and games.

Conceived and organized in large part by Wittenberg Assistant Professor of Biology Amber Burgett, the event was inspired by her own college days.

"At a BioBlitz, everyone is a scientist! During graduate school, I participated in a BioBlitz of Forest Park, which is in the heart of St. Louis," she said. "I was inspired by the collaboration between experts, park volunteers and the community. Watching kids and adults alike light up when holding a toad for the first time or realizing that 12 different dragonfly species call the duck pond home made me want to share that experience with others."

Wittenberg and Clark County Park District have partnered on numerous projects throughout the years. Together they will be sampling and identifying as many species as possible in the park during this 24-hour period. Some students will be organizing the sampling events with local experts from The Ohio State University, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and local volunteers from the Audobon Society and Clark County Parks. They will be seining for fish, setting out cameras and track traps for mammals, doing acoustic surveys for bats, spotlighting for moths and spiders, and conducting owl and bird surveys, just to name a few of the methods.

"Here at Wittenberg we've been working with the Clark County Park District for some time on collaborative projects," Burgett said. "Having such great parks close to campus has been a real asset for our biology majors as we visit often during labs. This is certainly a win-win-win situation: students will see a real application of the content they are learning, the Clark County Park District will collect important and useful data, and the community will have an opportunity to be scientists for a day, hopefully gaining an appreciation for biodiversity that will last much longer."

Both biology majors and non-majors at Wittenberg have been involved in putting together this event. Non-major students have been developing educational events and activities for children, in addition to helping to organize, market and oversee the event.

"My [non-major] students are artists and business majors specializing in marketing, accounting or management," Burgett explained. "They are education majors, historians and writers. They bring so much to the table when putting together an event like this. The marketing team designed our logos and T-shirts; the planning and logistics team has managed the budget and are coordinating volunteer schedules. The education teams have developed activities, events and crafts for the community centered on different species and taxonomic groups."

-By Emma Arace '17, Office of University Communications

-Photos courtesy of the Clark County Park District

About Wittenberg
A nationally ranked university for the liberal arts and sciences affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Wittenberg University has repeatedly been ranked throughout the years by the Princeton Review for the quality of its teaching and faculty, including 11th in the nation for "Best Classroom Experience" and 15th in the category "Professors Get High Marks" in the 2011 edition of Princeton's annual Best Colleges guide. Most recently, Wittenberg earned the No. 4 spot in the category of "Most Accessible Professors," and the university earned a spot on the "Best Buy" list in the 2017 Fiske Guide to Colleges. Wittenberg appeared in the Princeton Review's Guide to Green Colleges in 2013 and again in 2015. Additionally, Wittenberg currently has more Ohio Professors of the Year than any other four-year institution in the state, and has been recognized nationally for excellence in service and athletics.