Visit to Kew Gardens

The rain didn’t stop Geography students from CTK Aquinas enjoying their field trip to Kew Gardens in November.

They attended a session on ecosystems and climate change looking at how climate change affects our ecosystems today and in the future. Through field-based enquiry students explored and analyzed climate change mitigation strategies while developing knowledge and understanding of this complex issue.  

Their second session was on water and carbon cycles where they investigated the importance of the rainforest in the water and carbon cycles and discovered the impacts that human activity can have on these systems. Despite the damp weather students learned a lot from their visit.

Geography student, Mason said this about his visit to Kew Gardens;

“Our trip to Kew Gardens was a lovely and very intriguing look into the wonderful world of botany and how fauna and flora affect the world and our lives in the short and long term as well as how they adapt to survive in extreme climates and places where their environment is not favourable. The day was split into two sessions. Session one, had my group and I focus on the water and carbon cycle. We were expertly guided by staff to learn how without certain parts of these cycles, like animals eating decaying matter or plants blocking water runoff, would lead to very detrimental consequences for the Earth and our society. We were then taken to a massive greenhouse which simulates the climate of the rainforest enabling, exotic plants to grow and thrive as well as different insects too. We learnt about how there are many products that have ingredients the originate from the rainforest as well as life changing medicines that are extracted from plants and flowers there too. We were then informed about how the rainforest is not being protected and how some illegal practices used to chop down timber is causing the rainforest to shrink which impacts heavily on the massive amount of biodiversity which lives there. We were also taught how to measure the biomass of trees to determine different things about it for example the amount of carbon absorbed or the amount of oxygen it produces.”