As the homepage of the website describes, "The beauty of the Arctic, its precious and fragile nature, its critical role in maintaining a stable climate for the planet, and the rapid rate of change that is occurring there must all be conveyed to the general public. Here, through digital story telling, we put a human face on science, life, societies
Students will use marshmallows to simulate toxins in the environment. Concentrations of these toxins will be modeled and calculated as they bioaccumulate up the food chain. Methylmercury and POPs are substances that bioaccumulate in the Arctic food chain. OASIS scientists studied these in Barrow, Alaska. (See Ocean Atmosphere Sea Ice and Snow (OASIS) Project at www.polartrec.com)
Students will discover how a simple action such as turning on a television will lead to toxins in our food supply. Many of these toxins concentrate in the Arctic because of long-range transport of pollutants in the atmosphere. Scientists in the OASIS project (http://www.polartrec.com/ocean-atmosphere-sea-ice-and-snowpack-interactions) study these pollutants in the Arctic. Students will learn about actions that they can take to
In the Polar Discoveries Section of the Online NewsHour, professional photographer, Spencer Brown, uploaded a photjournal of scientists working as part of the OASIS campaign in Barrow, Alaska in the Spring of 2009.
Online version of the Eagle Times news article describing Frank Kelley's PolarTREC expedition in Barrow, Alaska. Frank Kelley, PI Anne Jensen, and the team are conducting archaeological studies at the Nuvuk site outside Barrow, Alaska.
Article from the Palm Beach Post describing work being completed by Anne Jensen and the archaeology team at the Nuvuk Archaeology site outside Barrow, Alaska.
The Surface Archaeology Activity will allow you to develop some of the knowledge and skills that archaeologists use to do their work while also getting a chore done at home. The steps are really easy, and then you can decide to maybe tackle another room in the house.
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
In this lesson, students learn about what archaeologists do and then practice implementing these skills with "real artifacts".
Objective
Students will:
* be able to define an artifact and an archaeologist.
* use evidence to support their decisions about the origin and use of an unknown item.