The objectives of this lesson are:
* Students will know that climate change is happening most quickly in Arctic regions.
* Students will know that a warming climate is causing permafrost to thaw.
* Students will know that thawing permafrost is impacting infrastructure in Alaska, including roads and buildings.
* Students will design an engineering solution to create stable
Researcher Elizabeth Webb discusses her experiences working in the field with a PolarTREC teacher. She worked with John Wood in 2011 and 2012, and Tom Lane in 2013, on the Carbon Balance in Warming and Drying Tundra expedition near Healy, Alaska. (She primarily discusses her time with John Wood since this interview was taken in 2013, before Tom Lane's expedition.)
Students will use a model to explore the relationships between sunlight and release of carbon dioxide (CO2) from thawing Arctic watersheds.
After studying the carbon cycle, students are asked to reflect on how natural phenomena – thawing of permafrost, interactions of soil microbes on dissolved carbon, and amount of sunlight – interconnect and influence the release of CO2
The report is written by teacher participants upon return from their field expedition portion of the PolarTREC program. It summarizes the benefit of the expedition to the teacher, a description of activities, and a summary of how teachers plan to link this experience in classrooms and communities. This is a public document that will be posted in teacher portfolios and
This one hour webinar is a great look at the PolarTREC 2014 Arctic expeditions. Each teacher presents a little about the research projects, implementation in the classroom, and outreach into communities.
Article in regional newspaper describes Regina Brinker's PolarConnect event and invites readers to participate at home or as the event is projected at the main public library branch.
This one hour webinar is hosted by PolarTREC teacher Regina Brinker who studied interactions of sunlight and microbes at Toolik Field Station in northern Alaska.
This one hour webinar is for students and the public hosted by Tom Lane. The team is studying carbon balance in warming and drying tundra in Healy, Alaska.
This scientific article, focuses on one of the largest pools of global carbon that is, the organic C stored in permafrost (perennially frozen) ground, and on the vulnerability to change under an increasingly warmer climate.
Have you ever wondered how polar scientists do it? How do they really know if the planet is losing vast quantities of ice anyway? You can use pictures from satellites to monitor the surface from year to year, but the vast majority of ice is hidden from view, buried beneath the surface in some of the most inhospitable and