This lesson plan is designed to teach students about the importance of the benthic community in the shallow portions of the Arctic and how climate change may affect their respiration. One of the dominant benthic animals in the Arctic, the bivalve Macoma sp., is an important food source for higher trophic level organisms such as walrus and Spectacled Eiders
This lesson plan is designed to teach students about benthic biodiversity in the Arctic by analyzing data from the Distributed Biological Observatory (DBO). Although you can’t see them from the surface, the organisms found on the ocean floor are important indicators of ecosystem health and provide information about productivity. Students will explore sites throughout the Bering and Chukchi Seas
Students will collect soil samples and analyze them with some of the same procedures used by researchers in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica. Soil microfauna (e.g. nematodes) will be extracted from the samples using a Baermann funnel. Students will compare their own data to published data from researchers working in Antarctica.
NASA’s Operation IceBridge, the largest airborne survey of Earth’s polar ice, uses remote sensing techniques like LiDAR (light detection and ranging), snow- and ice-penetrating radar, high resolution digital imaging, and infrared cameras to collect information on our changing ice sheets and sea ice. Several times each year a science team and flight crew head out on month-long campaigns in
The overview of this lesson is to introduce and bring attention to climate change. Students will experiment with other means of transportation to reduce their carbon footprint. Elementary students should be exposed to a more positive side of climate change. Having exposure to what students can do to make the world a better place is the direction of
How glaciers in the polar regions respond to continued climate warming is of great concern. Changes in overall glacier velocities and calving dynamics have immediate impacts on sea level. Accurate predictions of how and when ice loss will occur are crucial to forecasting future environmental change.
This lesson results from experiences working in and around Kronebreen glacier in
This lesson is for students to be able to read an informative piece of writing and identify factual statements and statements of opinions. In this lesson, we will be focusing on local and national articles relating to climate change.
This lesson was inspired by my time in Denali looking at evidence consistent with climate change and being exposed
IMOLD is a highly interactive website designed by Drs. Michael N. Weintraub and Daryl L. Moorhead in collaboration with the Center for Creative Instruction at the University of Toledo. Susan Steiner, PolarTREC teacher with Dr. Weintraub on the expedition, Tundra Nutrient Seasonality, collaborated on IMOLD’s design. Other teachers have contributed wonderful classroom activities that can be found posted
As a teacher on the NB Palmer Totten Cruise in the winter of 2014, I successfully traversed the Magnetic South Pole. This is a wandering point on the Earth’s surface where geomagnetic field lines are directed vertically upwards. As an Outdoor Educator I utilize compasses regularly to navigate. The traverse of the Magnetic South Pole inspired this lesson
This lesson/project/lab has students predict via multiple drawings and time lapse photography predictive Flubber flow before the placement of barriers and other obstacles in front of the Flubber. Contour lines in two directions are drawn on both the paper prediction and the Flubber for comparison purposes.
Following predictive drawing completion glacier flow (Flubber flow), with obstacles in place
