Students planting a rain garden in a pile of mulch.

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Enviromental Connections - Rain Gardens Project

“Can we have class outside today?”

Every warm, sunny afternoon in classrooms across the country, students beg teachers to move their lectures and lessons outdoors. This fall, Augsburg students were able to do just that. They moved out of the classroom and got their hands dirty while learning how our everyday actions can affect the environment locally and across the country.

Environmental Connections, a newly created class that began in Fall 2007, explores the many links between the campus and our local and global ecosystems through the examination of water in ecological, sociological, political, economic, chemical, historical, and literary contexts. An important focus of the course was the creation of three rain gardens built and designed by the students in the class with the assistance of Bruce Rowe (Facilities Management) and Meredith Cooley (a professional native plant landscaper).

Designing and creating the rain garden helped students gain awareness of how their actions affect the environment and learned how they can make a positive difference in the world around them.

Rain gardens promote water conservation. As shallow depressions in the ground, they collect water that would otherwise run off into the street. Rain gardens contain plants that are water-tolerant and native to the Midwest. These native plants can withstand the large and periodic amounts of water, and, unlike the homogeneous turf grass species we usually see in lawns throughout urban and suburban areas, allow water to permeate into the soil where root systems can filter out any pollutants and absorb nutrients.

When runoff flows into the streets it collects pollutants such as lawn fertilizers, grass clippings, garbage, and car oils, all of which drain down into the storm sewers and eventually flow into the Mississippi River. The rain gardens were strategically placed on the Augsburg Campus near the downspouts along the north side of Sverdrup Hall below the link to the Lindell Library and also on the corner of 21st Avenue and 7th Street to curb the large amount of water flowing into the street.

Although the Mississippi Rivers seems relatively clean here in Minneapolis, it collects more and more pollutants as it travels south that could have been minimized or even prevented by the use of rain gardens. These pollutants find their way to the Mississippi Delta and the Gulf of Mexico, where they feed eutrophication (a large algae bloom that uses all of the dissolved oxygen in the water, making it impossible for other species to survive).

Water pollution is also a local problem. Many Twin Cities residents do not realize that the water they drink comes from the same place where the storm sewers dump—the Mississippi River. As urban citizens, we need to become aware of the damaging effects our carelessness can have on the environment. In Environmental Connections, students learn about how people can make a difference.

~excerpts from Erin Johnson's paper for SBS 100: Environmental Connections, Fall 2007

Environmental Studies Contact Info

ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Enviromental Connections - Rain Gardens Project

NEWS & EVENTS

Politics and the mighty Mississippi