Editing Land lab (section)

{{short description|Outdoor laboratory for biological study}}[[File:Land Lab Urban Garden.jpg|alt=Land Lab Garden|thumb|An educational land lab with pollinators gardens, bird houses, and vegetable garden space within an urban setting.]]
A '''land lab''' is an area of land that has been set aside for use in [[biology|biological]] studies.  Thus, it is literally an outdoor laboratory based on an area of land.

Studies may be elementary or advanced.  For instance, students may simply be given the task of identifying all the [[tree]] species in a land lab, or an advanced student may be doing an intensive survey of the microbial life forms found in a [[soil]] sample.

Hands on, tangible, [[Project-based learning|project-base learning]] is a key aspect of land labs within an educational context.  Land labs can exist anywhere with outdoor access:  educational campuses, residential neighborhoods, [[Peri-urban agriculture|peri-urban]] settings, urban settings, or even a small [[courtyard]].  The driving principle behind land lab education is getting outside and interacting with the world directly.

Land labs are often marked out in plots or [[transect]]s for studies.  A plot may be any size, usually marked out in square meters.  This allows for more intensive, delimited studies of changes and inventories of [[biota (ecology)|biota]].  Transects are straight lines at which, at intervals, measurements are taken for a profile of the [[ecology|ecological]] community.
[[File:Vegetable in Grow Bags.jpg|alt=Grows bags provide a flexible and mobile gardening environment for land labs.  Chard and kale are growing in these grow bags.|thumb|Grow bags provide a flexible and mobile gardening environment for land labs.  Chard and kale are growing in these grow bags.]]
Land labs serve an important role in giving students access to a natural environment to observe native plants and wildlife, apply [[Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics|STEM]] concepts with hands on projects, and build a better understanding of how critical [[biodiversity]] is for ecological health.