Munson Sandhills

We dig holes with the UF/IFAS Leon County Extension, learning about the soils of Tallahassee, from the Red Hills to the sandhills.

We hike the Munson Sandhills in late March, finding early spring wildflowers in bloom, including two lupine species and new green blueberries.

We explore what the striped newt has to tell us about drought and groundwater in Tallahassee, and meet some of the amazing animals found in its wetlands.

We watch seasonal change in two Tallahassee locations, Lake Elberta (an urban park) and in the Munson Sandhills region of the Apalachicola National Forest.

Adopt an Ephemeral Wetland is citizen science focused on amphibians. But participants will also learn about seasonality and the forest around wetlands.

In the Munson Sandhills, citizen scientists are monitoring the rare frosted elfin butterfly. This insect needs fire to survive- at the right time of year.

Two releases of striped newts into ephemeral wetlands in the Apalachicola National Forest show how this is an amphibian forged by fire.

Two families visit dried out ephemeral wetlands in the Munson Sandhills. Even without water, they find gopher frogs and visit rare butterfly habitat.

We meet many of the dozens of butterfly species found in several habitats in Tallahassee, as citizen scientists conduct a yearly survey.

Kids play in muck, meet frogs and newts, and bond with ephemeral wetlands in the Apalachicola National Forest as parents collect data on wetland wildlife.