The Carbon Cycle: Teaching Youth About Natural Resource Sustainability

The carbon cycle was used as a conceptual construct for organizing the curriculum for a youth summer camp on natural resource use and sustainability. Several studies have indicated the importance of non-traditional youth education settings for science education and understanding responsible natural resource use. The Sixth Grade Forestry Tour, a long-standing youth natural resource education summer camp in Idaho conducted by Extension, was used to test the efficacy of this approach in 2013, with positive results that suggest continued development of this concept for future years and in other settings