Photo courtesy of Grand Canyon Youth

Students, staff, and crew of the Leading the Way program commemorate their trip down the Colorado River with a photo. The participants logged natural and human-related sounds at seven locations in Grand Canyon National Park.

DURING SUMMER 2008, 12 VISUALLY IMPAIRED STUDENTS along with sighted teenagers and guides embarked on a Colorado River trip through Grand Canyon National Park that was the first of its kind. They were participants in a program called “Leading the Way,” a partnership between two nonprofits, Grand Canyon Youth (GCY) and Global Explorers, and two commercial outfitters, Canyon Explorations and Arizona Raft Adventures. Grand Canyon Youth provides experiential education along the rivers and canyons of the desert Southwest. The program requires students to participate in a service project as part of their field experience to encourage resource stewardship. Past projects have involved removing invasive plants and photographing beaches along the Colorado River for a campsite atlas. However, given that hearing is an especially important sense for many in this group, a sound-oriented project was a natural choice. Additionally, this project encourages science education in a national park setting through the involvement of the students in collecting acoustic data for the Grand Canyon National Park Soundscape Program.

This project encourages science education in a national park setting.