What is C3 all about?

What is C3 all about? Well, that is the same question I asked myself about the name of this YES component prior to me assisting as a mentor with it. I soon learned that C3 stood for Communicating Climate Change and the teens that are in the component are responsible for exactly that. The teens that are a part of the component are responsible for working everyday in the summer and on Saturdays in the fall and spring to research Climate Change in our environment in several different ways. Then of course they are then responsible for communicating this information to several different scientists and experts around the country who are also studying this phenomenom. Delighted to become a part of this component, I came to be astounded by the remarkable ways that the teens were studying. They were actually gaining the experience of real researchers and scientists. One of the main ways to study climate change is by studying amphibians. Amphibians are considered an indicator species which means that they are one of first living things that show us signs of something going wrong within our environment. So, one of the things that the teens study in the summer is frog calls. Studying the frog calls identifies the changes of species of the frogs in the area and also detects how much earlier or later the frogs are calling for the area. Both of these factors indicate climate change in the environment. Another way that the teens study climate change is by doing butterfly field studies. To do the studies, the teens go to a local MO state conservation park that has several species of butterflies to do the real work of an entomologist. An entomologist is a scientist that studies insects. The teens use butterfly nets to catch, observe, count, record, and identify as many butterflys as possible for the area of the transection. To do this work accurately, it is a very long, tedious, and precise process. The teens have to stay in a straight line and walk forward at the same time to cover the entire width and length of the transect. The information that is recorded allows an entomologist to review the changes in the species and numbers of butterflies for the area which allows them to determine climate change as the factor. Becoming a mentor and doing the research with these teens has been an amazing experience for me. Just like its done for several teens in the project, the work I've done with this component has certainly pushed me out of my comfort zone to expose me to new things. Needless to say, I am very happy that I was assigned to do this great work in C3. It has been an awesome and memorable experience for me so far working with the teens and the research and I'm sure that several of the C3 teens would agree : )