SCITUATE — Shannon Donovan’s students are going to be wandering through the woods soon, but they’ll know where they are thanks to a $15,000 federal grant obtained by the Scituate High School science teacher.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allocated the money as an environmental education grant to train teachers, juniors and seniors in state-of-the-art mapping technology. The program is to begin in the fall.

Donovan said yesterday that she will work with the Scituate Land Trust and the Conservation Commission, finding places in the wild to do research using the handheld Global Positioning System and Geological Information System devices financed by the grant.

“We will be able to find data points of invasive species, for example,” Donovan said. The unwanted visitors include bittersweet, Japanese knotweed, garlic mustard and purpose loosestrife. “There’s a lot of them around that we may encounter,” she said.

The students also will investigate non-point pollution sources and will monitor water-quality stations with an eye toward developing management plans.

“The students are going to use GPS for data points as to the location of specimens, and plot them on maps,” she said. “They will also take digital pictures and air samples when necessary, using GIS. We are going to build maps or add to maps with the data they collect.”

Donovan said that the program will be a more or less permanent one, each year building on the past endeavors. She said the first year will probably be spent on data collection and mapping, and on development of management plans.

In succeeding years, “we may get out there and do some removal,” she said, referring to the invasive weeds. “Once we have the equipment we can do the work indefinitely,” she said.

Donovan said that up to 25 students will be eligible for the program, but she was not certain how many would sign up.

The equipment also will be made available to students who do not sign up for the course, but who want to do independent inquiries, Donovan said. It also will be made available for students entering science fairs and doing senior projects.

She said she hopes the students can get trained in time to explore the woods before the leaves fall from the trees.

In the spring the student participants are to do a PowerPoint presentation at a workshop at which students and teachers from other schools will have a chance of training.

“This stuff,” she said, referring to the digital gadgets, “is useful for other purposes — traffic flow, marketing, etc. You can map it and learn by looking at the spatial relationships.”

tmorgan@projo.com