In a “March Madness” game of survival of the fittest, will your microbe and its genes survive the test of changing conditions on Planet Earth and beyond? Students choose genes from a “toolbox” and pit their microbe against their classmates’, using critical thinking and argument writing to determine the microbe with the best chance of success. Based on PolarTREC
PolarConnect Event with teacher Stan Skotnicki and researcher Mike Loranty with the Vegetation Changes in Permafrost project. This event was live from Northeast Scientific Station in Russia.
PolarConnect Event with teacher DJ Kast and researchers Drs. Byron Crump and George Kling with the Microbial Changes in Arctic Freshwater 2016 project. This event was live from Toolik Field Station in Alaska.
Teacher Anne Schoeffler talks about field work and study sites as part of the PolarTREC expedition “Climate Change and Pollinators in the Arctic” based out of Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.
Through this demonstration and review of the attached research documents and the expedition PolarConnect event archive you will better be able to visualize how warming deep ocean currents undermine the ice sheets of Antarctica.
Objectives
To determine, through a demonstration and review of a scientific abstract, how warm water currents speed up ice sheet loss and sub-ice
Analogs are used in science investigations to better understand systems we can’t access ourselves. In this lesson, students explore the Dry Valleys of Antarctica to better understand microbial communities on early Earth and what might have been possible on ancient Mars. Students will examine photographs, written descriptions, and artistic renderings of early Earth, the Dry Valley lakes, and
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
Students in cooperative teams will use a spreadsheet and graphing program such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel to graph and evaluate a large data set. The data sets provided come from authentic arctic ground squirrel research completed at Toolik Research station in arctic Alaska. The data sets were downloaded from body temperature loggers implanted into individual animals
Students in cooperative teams will use a spreadsheet and graphing program such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel to graph and evaluate a large data set. The data sets provided come from authentic arctic ground squirrel research completed at Toolik Research station in arctic Alaska. The data sets were downloaded from body temperature loggers implanted into individual animals
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