Smoky Mountian News - When Aaron Patterson graduated from Tuscola High this year, little did he know a big chunk of his summer break would be spent, clipboard in hand, sprawled out in the dirt on a 5,000-foot mountain top, sharing long intimate moments with the leaves of a wild coneflower plant. One of the research leaders, Howard Neufeld of Appalachian State University, took that experiment to the field to study the effects of ozone on plants in their natural environment. The Appalachian Science Learning Center, a research outpost in the Haywood County portion of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, helped Neufeld plant a plot of coneflowers and enlisted high school interns to monitor the plot, known simply as the “ozone garden.” Read full article