The University of Birmingham has launched a virtual tropical mangrove tour as an educational resource for schools.
A team from the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR) has developed the virtual tour based on film of the in the Jebel Ali Mangrove near Dubai.
It sits alongside existing free education resources which bring the effect of elevated CO2 on a UK oak forest directly into the classroom.
Users can visit the resources by clicking on links in the interactive 360-degree environment or using a virtual reality headset.
The tour shows how mangroves, found on tropical shorelines around the world, are different from the UK oak forest, and how they help the natural environment through storing CO2, providing a buffer from storms and improving water quality.
Professor Jeremy Pritchard, director of education for BIFoR, said: “Mangroves are at risk from increasing sea levels and coastal development, as well as agricultural and industrial activities. These environments form an important part of the geography and biology curriculum in the UK and we hope that these resources will offer teachers a new route into exploring the them and the climate change threats that they face.”
The resource is part of a suite of free educational resources and is based on the Institute’s virtual BIFoR tour, which invites students to explore the free-air carbon enrichment experiment which the university has been running since 2017. This measuring how a traditional mature oak forest responds to increased CO2 levels, simulating the atmosphere we are predicted to have in 2050.
Dr Samantha Dobbie, BIFoR’s education and outreach officer, said: “Both the BIFoR virtual tour and the mangrove tour help school students to really engage with different environments outside the classroom. By offering an immersive experience we’re also providing a different perspective on climate change issues which we hope will inspire the next generation of plant scientists – and climate aware citizens.”
