This lesson introduces students to krill, their importance in ocean ecosystems, and the physical structures that make up the krill body. The students will then use the principles of a "floater" species and design their own krill, hopefully having a class competition to see who can build a better krill.
Objectives
Students will understand the importance of krill in
Rings of life is a comparative lesson allowing students to investigate growth rings in walleye Pollock from the Bering Sea and Ponderosa Pine trees.
Objectives
Students will be able to compare and contrast growth rings on fish and trees, showing just one of the tools scientists use to monitor the health of different ecosystems. Students will also be able
Students will develop an understanding of what it takes to interview scientists, and take the corresponding data and reformat it into an electronic medium.
Objective
Students will be able to write questions to scientists in the field, interview, take the data collected, and convert to an electronic format including MP3 clips and post to the Internet.
The Kuril Biocomplexity Project is a National Science Foundation-funded research project led by the University of Washington and being conducted by a team of American, Japanese and Russian scholars and students who are examining a 5000-year history of human-environmental interactions along the Kuril Island chain in the northwest Pacific Ocean. This is the link to the project website.
This activity is designed to take place near or at the end of a unit on the ocean floor. Students should be familiar with the physical features of the ocean floor including the continental shelf, abyssal plain, seamounts and guyots, seafloor ridges and trenches, and submarine canyons. The students should have also previously learned about sonar methods for mapping the