Students will review charts of day length to determine when the sun will set at Toolik Lake.
Objective
Students will learn the following:
* The sun is the major source of energy for phenomena on the earth's surface, such as growth of plants, winds, ocean currents, and the water cycle.
* Seasons result from variations in the
Students will undertake a long term project to evaluate the effectiveness of different local forecasters, match the forecast with the actual weather and analyze which forecaster is best.
Objective
Students will compare the accuracy of different weather forecasts. Students will compile and analyze their own data gaining a better understanding of the challenges involved in weather forecasting
This website has tables and graphs to show length of day for locations throughout the world, including Antarctica and the Arctic. Additional weather information is also included.
(permission to link and use the site was granted by Matt Tukianen, the site creator, on July 9, 2008)
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 web site, managed by the Bureau of Land Management Alaska Fire Service, tracks lightning strikes and fires in Alaska caused by lightning all the way back to 1939. See if you can find the lightning strike that caused the big fire of 2007.
Students use data and pictures of a destroyed wind sensor, to develop a theory of what happened to the station. They then develop a plan to make sure the station is not destroyed again.
Objective
Students will be able to use data to develop a reasonable hypothesis.
This website contains gorgeous pictures and interesting background information on Antarctica, including history, environmental conditions, and research. A twelve-minute overview can be followed by longer segments on Antarctica's weather, Forecasting, and Antarctica and global climate.
To view the module, you will have to register. Once you have created a login, you will be forwarded to the Antarctica module. Additional modules
Students are presented with an actual series of tundra photos, which they use to develop a hypothesis for which sort of ground cover will have the most/least permafrost depth. Then they are given a set of actual data and use this to test their hypothesis
Objective
Students will:
* understand what permafrost is and how it develops