Scientists in Siberia are seeing trends of more severe and widespread wildfires. By observing and measuring larch forests, they are trying to understand how the forests are changing. What do these trees need to survive? Are they getting what they need? Students will plant lodgepole pine seeds providing some with all the necessary components for survival and others missing
Scientists in Siberia are seeing trends of more severe and widespread wildfires. Larch seeds are dispersed by wind. Experimentation is currently underway to determine distances larch seeds can disperse from viable, mature larch trees. Students will explore how various types of seeds are dispersed to get what they need to survive.
Timeframe: 90 minutes
Grade: K-2
Students will learn to:
* Observe and record weather patterns
* Process data by creating graphs/charts
* Compare actual weather data from the Siberian Arctic to local weather patterns, draw conclusions and make future predictions concerning weather patterns.
Big Idea
Why do people need to track weather over time?
Lesson Preparation
You will need a thermometer, tracking calendar, and
The Importance of Teacher/Researcher Collaboration
Collaboration such as this offers a window into the science rarely seen by teachers and their students. It allows the public/students to experience, in real-time, relevant data collection of the 21st century. Furthermore, experiences such as these demonstrate the universal factors of the scientific process. It does not matter if we are practicing science in
PolarTREC teacher Jacquelyn Hams' expedition is featured in Foundations: the Newsletter of the Geo2YC division of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers.
This data plotting lesson compares different stratospheric ozone data collected at the South Pole in September 1969, September 1998, September 2008, January 1999, and January 2008. This ozone comparison activity allows students to make conclusions about the annual and seasonal ozone hole as well as overall ozone concentration changes over Antarctica. Students use authentic data collected at the
Beacon Valley is recognized by scientists as one of the most Mars-like environments on Earth. This lesson plan was created so that students could have the opportunity to examine the same landforms that scientists use to study the processes that operate in both of these extreme environments. There are two parts to this lesson. Teachers may choose to
The Dry Valleys region in Antarctica is known as the coldest, windiest, driest place on Earth. Beacon Valley is famous for its katabatic winds which can routinely knock fit adults and PolarTREC teachers to the ground. This lesson was created by PolarTREC teacher Jacquelyn Hams who experienced the cold and the full force of the winds in 2008
This data plotting lesson is about temperature changes throughout the atmosphere. The data was collected together with the ozone data in January 2008.
The temperature vs. altitude profile allows students to make conclusions about annual and seasonal temperature changes in the atmosphere up to about 35 kilometers in the stratosphere. The best part of this lesson is using
The Antarctic Research Group at Boston University is lead by Dr. David Marchant. Graduate students include Adam Lewis, Doug Kowalewski, and Kate Swanger.
Marchant's ongoing NSF funded research projects focus on:
1. Age, origin, and climatic significance of buried ice in the Dry Valleys region, southern Victoria Land
2. Response of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet to middle Miocene global