As part of an exchange program through the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and World Learning Inc., Ecuadorian, Colombian, and Peruvian youth worked with South Florida Water Management District scientists to restore a section of the roughly 60,000 acres of Stormwater Treatment Areas. These youth planted emergent and submerged aquatic vegetation to help reduce the phosphorus pollution that enters the STA’s from adjacent agricultural canals.

Students at Rockway Middle School in Miami, FL, grow corals in their classroom and have learned about the critical ecosystem services that the reefs provide. This classroom is working with university partners to restore habitat by providing healthy corals for transplant to experimental reef sites.