"The stream in a trap" educational project on Rio Maggiore stream in Livorno

In September 2017, Livorno had been hit by a tremendous flood caused by an extremely heavy rain that caused river floods, moving water, sediments and wood biomass from the close hills down to town. Here, canalizations and covered rivers did not sustain such amount of water and flooded, causing damages and deaths. One year later, the primary school Thouar (Circolo Don Angeli, Livorno) agreed to participate in the project "Trapped rivers: a look at the streams from Livorno hills down to town" with the aim to observe and analyze the impact of urbanization on rivers and water management and understand the importance of river ecosystems and natural habitats. The objectives of the project were to engage students in: o mapping urban streams from the spring to the mouth; o analysing the ecosystems along the streams and the quality of the water. o reflecting about the effects of climate change and urban soil sealing and river coverage. A class of 20 pupils took part in the project. Students were engaged in an oriented inquiry-based learning project, implementing outdoors activities, hands-on activities and experiments, brainstorming and debating. The preliminary engagement was an exploration along the urban part of the "Rio Maggiore" stream, where students could make observations on the shape of the stream, the land use along the stream by mapping the sealed and non-sealed areas; the water flow, sediments and vegetation. In a second outdoor excursion, they explored the natural part of the stream, near the source on the Livorno hills - a chain of hills at the shoulder of the town. From these observations, they hypothesized the reasons of the huge flood and in the classroom, they debated about observations made more specific experiments and studies. For instance, by calculating the sealed surface from their maps and simulating an heavy rain, they calculated the amount of runoff water. They discussed about the land morphology of the territory, the slope of the hills, the distance from the town and the river characteristics from the hills to the town (e.g. considering the effects of vegetation and river management on the water flow). A conceptual map made by a debate guided by the teacher summarized the collected observations. The paper describes the project application and the educational achievements.