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
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
This one hour webinar is a great look at the PolarTREC 2014-5 Antarctic expeditions. Each teacher presents on the research projects, implementation in the classroom, and outreach into communities.
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
Ground penetrating radar is an important tool for studying glacier dynamics. Glacier scientists use GPR images to analyze attributes of glaciers. The following research activity will familiarize students with the basics of the different types of glaciers and their dynamics along with ground penetrating radar and its use in glacier studies.
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
Note: This event was not for our typical classroom-based education audience.
WAIS Divide (West Antarctic Ice Sheet), where the Velvet Ice team conducted its research, has recently be found to be one of the most vulnerable areas of Antarctica to global climate change. If recent predictions hold true, major glaciers in WAIS could collapse within 100 years, triggering massive shifts
This one hour event is an introduction to the expedition with Yamini Bala and her team. They address life at McMurdo and what it will be like at their remote field site at WAIS Divide (West Antarctic Ice Sheet).
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.