Blanding’s Turtles at Nahant Marsh

Blanding’s Turtle populations are decreasing across the United States. This is largely due to habitat loss. Nahant Marsh has been conducting a mark and recapture program on turtles since 2010 and has kept a record of this population. As the Blanding’s Turtles' environmental conditions are changing (habitat loss), their population is steadily declining.

Possible Guiding, Compelling and/or Anchoring Questions

• What’s happening to the Blanding’s turtle population in Iowa?
• How has the land use change in Iowa impacted the Iowa Blanding’s turtle population?

Classroom Suggestions

• Students can learn about the Blanding’s turtles and determine what they think is causing the population trends. They can then use the Iowa Map Viewer to look at an area of Iowa and see how it has changed over time to see if this supports their prediction. They can then expand on this to determine the future outlook of the turtles. This could extend into HS-LS-4-6 to create or revise a simulation to test a solution to mitigate adverse impacts of human activity on biodiversity.

Related Resources

• Reptiles and Amphibians: Blanding’s Turtle: This site contains a description and map of the most recent sightings of Blanding’s turtles in Iowa.
• Iowa Reptiles: Information from the Iowa DNR about the Blanding’s turtle.
• Blanding’s Turtle (Emydoidea blandingii): A Technical Conservation Assessment: A very detailed guide about the Blanding’s turtle from 2006.  It includes habitat information.
• Iowa Map Viewer: ARC GIS map of Iowa that you can go over to the right and select map layers that you can examine the land changes over time.