How do we know what kind of phytoplankton are in the water? The Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB) is a robot that scientists use to image phytoplankton in the water. One IFCB can take up to 30,000 pictures per hour! The IFCB can be used in the field to detect plankton blooms in real time. In this activity, students will practice
From July 19, 2022, to August 15, 2022, I participated in the Harmful Algal Blooms in Arctic Waters research cruise on the R/V Norseman II. The Chief Scientist was Dr. Robert Pickart from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the research team included scientists from WHOI, Oregon State University, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation
This event with teacher Rebecca Siegel was broadcast live on 4 August 2022 from the Norseman II in Arctic waters. Rebecca is joined by team members from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute working on Harmful Algal Blooms in Arctic Waters.
Scientists are studying the effect of climate change on vegetation in the Alaskan tundra. In this activity, students will analyze data collected from control plots and plots with Open Top Chambers (OTC's) over them. An open-top chamber is like a tiny greenhouse that increases the temperature in a vegetation plot an average of 2-3 degrees, simulating the effects of
After spending 5 weeks in the Arctic learning about tundra vegetation and phenology, Alejandra Martinez wanted to have her students observe the growth of plants in their school. In this lesson, students will grow plants in multiple locations and track their growth to compare their phenology.
Objectives
Students will learn what phenology is and make observations about plant growth
South Texas is pretty far removed from the Arctic. When I mention climate change in my classroom, my students think of emaciated polar bears roaming the Arctic Ocean for a few minutes and then carry on with their day. I needed to find a way to connect what was happening in the Arctic to
Florida International University (FIU) Preeminent Program research team hunts for the drivers of global climate change in the Arctic. Video produced by Florida International University, May 2019.
For this activity, the students are going to draw on their own knowledge and experience with weather to predict the current temperatures around the world and then compare their predictions with real-time weather data from selected locations around the world. The students will then be provided with several factors that affect both daily changes in temperature and climatological temperature
Never, in my 27 year career as a teacher, have I had so many students so interested and enthusiastic in so many broad and varied topics that they would have immediately dismissed as “boring” had I not participated in PolarTREC. I was happily mystified by the curiosity of the students and the depth of their interest in
This is an article in a local quarterly magazine (IN Shaler Winter 2018 ed.) about Mike Penn's PolarTREC deployment to Antarctica with the 2018 Automatic Weather Stations project.