Exploring Ecosystems: APES Students Test the Health of the Potomac River

Led by two Chesapeake Bay Foundation guides and chaperoned by Mr. Northrup and Dr. Tuttle, students paddled canoes upstream to “10-Foot Island,” where they landed and collected abiotic and biotic water samples. Happily, results from the tests of nitrates, phosphorus, pH, and dissolved oxygen, as well as counts of mayflies and damselflies, indicate that the Potomac is quite healthy.

This field trip has a clear campus connection; Foxcroft’s property is bordered by Goose Creek, which drains into the Potomac, which in turn runs into the Chesapeake Bay. “We want the students to understand the environmental connections between the local, the regional, and even the national scale,” said AP Environmental Science teacher Alex Northrup. “The AP course curriculum is about the interaction between human and natural systems, and this field trip is an opportunity to connect class material to the real world.”

“Going on the APES field trip helped me better understand what we were learning in class by allowing us to experience environmental science firsthand,” shared senior CeCe Y. “We were able to observe living species, test different parts of their ecosystem, and see how healthy their habitats are. Canoeing down the Potomac River and exploring what we have been learning in class helped me understand how different parts of an ecosystem are connected.”

Classmate Michaela W. ’27 also enjoyed the trip, offering, “Our APES class took a trip to Algonkian Regional Park and got the opportunity to canoe down the Potomac River to explore a big part of our ecosystem. This trip was extremely fun because we got to explore islands around the water as well as the wildlife in it.”