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Terrific Scientific begins!

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This May, primary school children around the UK will be leaving their classrooms behind to explore the trees in and around their school grounds, as part of the BBC's Terrific Scientific Trees Investigation.

Terrific Scientific is BBC Learning’s science project for 2017, with investigations on Time, Taste, Water, Trees and Forces taking place throughout the year.

During the Trees experiment in partnership with the University of Leeds, children from the UK’s 25,000+ primary schools will learn about why trees are important for our climate and the other amazing things trees do for us.

Children will count the number of trees at their school and survey them to find out which species are present and how big they are.

Leaf ID charts have been designed by The Woodland Trust to enable the children to identify their trees and they will use simple measurement techniques to estimate the width and height of their trees.

The children will then use this information to work out how much carbon is stored by their trees and how much their school is helping to fight climate change.

Finally, they'll send all their data to us here at LEAF for further processing. For every school that takes part, LEAF's charitable partner the United Bank of Carbon, have arranged for a tree to be planted in tropical Africa as part of Terrific Tropical Trees!

“Today’s children are going to be the people in 20 or 30 years’ time making the big decisions about how society deals with the ongoing threat of climate change – we think it’s important that they grow up with an appreciation of the way that different parts of our environment are interconnected” said Dr Cat Scott, Environmental Scientist and LEAF Coordinator.

Teachers will be provided with a range of online resources, and an interactive Terrific Scientific map of the UK, enabling schools to upload their results from each of the scientific investigations and compare with each other.

Schools can sign up at: www.bbc.co.uk/terrificscientific to take part.

Contact Dr Catherine Scott for more information about the University's involvement.