With the limitations facing most public high school teachers, we face the challenge of providing an educational experience in ecology that can provide students with a meaningful and authentic field research experience. Terrestrial forest arthropod surveys provide students with a rewarding, low cost field experience that fosters active research skills while providing a framework for exploring ecological complexity and forest management issues.

Results/Conclusions

The students conducting these surveys are part of a Northwest Ecology class at Merlo Station Community School, an alternative high school that specializes in helping historically low scoring students find academic success. The author has worked with students to conduct forest arthropod surveys in conjunction with land management agencies for the last eight years. Students learn to frame research questions, collect terrestrial arthropod data, identify and preserve specimens, record and analyze data, draw conclusions from data, and take part in the production of a professional report. The terrestrial arthropod study has consistently engaged students in the research process and enabled them to experience an authentic integration of ecological concepts that are traditionally taught in discreet units in a classroom. The study leaves students with a greater appreciation for the significance of aspects of ecosystems that are largely ignored by the public and an appreciation of the diversity of arthropod life and complexity of interactions that make up our native forest ecosystem.