In this video segment adapted from NOVA, a meteorologist explains how an unusual weather pattern led to one of the most devastating floods of this century.

Students are introduced to innovative stormwater management strategies that are being used to restore the hydrology and water quality of urbanized areas to pre-development conditions. Collectively called green infrastructure (GI) and low-impact development (LID) technologies, they include green roofs and vegetative walls, bioretention or rain gardens, bioswales, planter boxes, permeable pavement, urban tree canopy, rainwater harvesting, downspout disconnection, green streets and alleys, and green parking. These approaches differ from the traditional centralized stormwater collection system with the idea of handling stormwater at its sources, resulting in many environmental, economic and societal benefits. A PowerPoint® presentation provides photographic examples, and a companion file gives students the opportunity to sketch in their ideas for using the technologies to make improvements to 10 real-world design scenarios.

This course introduces students to basic rain garden design, water cistern development, and bioretention principles. Students will also explore the uses of landform, plants, and structure to shape space. Classes will include slide-illustrated lectures, class discussions, and project critiques. Through a combination of short practicum that includes rain garden design for residential, commercial, and government locations, students will be able to analyze and create a design that applies modern theories to questions of spatial organization, order, and selection of building materials. Students will translate research and case studies by applying building, drawing, and design critiques specific for the site design and present their findings to the community.

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Faced with the potential of a large expense related to water quality, the Portland (Maine) Water District performed a thorough analysis of their options. Their choice came down to making an investment in conservation or concrete.

Formative assessment questions using a classroom response system ("clickers") can be used to reveal students' spatial understanding. Students are shown this diagram and told, "A storm event releases chemicals stored at the farm that end up in the groundwater. Click on the well that is most likely to be contaminated."

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This activity allows students to understand the groundwater flow. Using a groundwater map, they will draw flow lines and determine the discharge and rate of flow.

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Students will work in groups to make observations, identify aquifers, describe aquifer properties and measure hydraulic head in a physical groundwater flow model. The information collected will be used to answer questions pertaining to the groundwater flow system. The activity serves to consolidate the key concepts covered in lecture materials. These concepts include the water cycle, hydraulic head, types of aquifers, hydraulic conductivity, permeability, Darcy's Law, hydraulic gradient, porosity and groundwater contamination.

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This course covers fundamentals of subsurface flow and transport, emphasizing the role of groundwater in the hydrologic cycle, the relation of groundwater flow to geologic structure, and the management of contaminated groundwater. The class includes laboratory and computer demonstrations.

Students use analog models to explore the behavior of groundwater. Students calculate porosity of analog materials (cups of marbles and beads), and then observe groundwater flow using food coloring as a dye tracer. They explore the effects of pumping wells and contaminating groundwater through a leaky landfill. One portion of the model allows students to observe the behavior of an artesian aquifer.

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This is a version of the Groundwater Lab (https://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/intro/activities/23416.html) previously shared as part of the Teaching Introductory Geology collection. It uses an online (https://pvw.kitware.com/sandtank/) version of an "ant farm" groundwater model to demonstrate groundwater flow and the behavior of wells. The lab is organized so that students have to predict the behavior of the model before observing it.

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In class, instructor provides background on groundwater-surface water interactions, defines the hyporheic zone, and describes why knowledge of the HZ is important for both hydrology and ecology.

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Groundwater accounts for only 0.75% of all water on Earth, yet it is a precious resource for the biosphere. In the United States, about one-fifth of the population taps into the groundwater reservoir of the hydrologic cycle as their main source of drinking water. However, worldwide, about 40% of all irrigation water comes from groundwater, and up to 80% of groundwater withdrawals are used for agriculture. Groundwater is also at risk and vulnerable to pollution, especially in areas with karst topography such as Tampa FL. Thus, the more people who understand the potential and the problems associated with groundwater, the better are the prospects for this resource.

Student materials for this exercise include a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with with data for dye tests and elevations, a .zip archive with two versions of the topographic map (PDF and JPG), as well as the instruction sheet. The exercise is divided into three parts.

In Part I, students study the Sulphur Springs topographic quadrangle and identify features of karst topography on the map. This part of the exercise also reviews basic groundwater terminology.

Part II involves transferring hydraulic head information from Microsoft Excel to a simplified sketch map of the quadrange and drawing contour lines on the potentiometric surface. Next, students use the contour lines to add arrows indicating the direction of groundwater flow. Finally, students apply their knowledge to determine which lakes could be affected by a toxic spill within the quadrangle.

In Part III, students study the results of dye tests in the Sulphur Springs quadrangle to analyze the flow of groundwater. They also use elevation data to construct a vertical cross section that illustrates the ground surface, the water table, and the potentiometric surface for the Floridan aquifer, and they relate the cross section to features on the topographic map.

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Students are presented with a guide to rain garden construction in an activity that culminates the unit and pulls together what they have learned and prepared in materials during the three previous associated activities. They learn about the four vertical zones that make up a typical rain garden with the purpose to cultivate natural infiltration of stormwater. Student groups create personal rain gardens planted with native species that can be installed on the school campus, within the surrounding community, or at students' homes to provide a green infrastructure and low-impact development technology solution for areas with poor drainage that often flood during storm events.

In this activity, students create and interpret a water table contour map. Students utilize groundwater well elevations and the depth to the water table at each well to determine the water table elevation at each well location. Then they utilize that information to create a contour map of the water table and determine the direction of groundwater flow.

Students first study the movement of water in aquifers through a lecture on Darcy's flow experiment. Then they practice applying the concepts of hydraulic conductivity and head differentials to 1 dimensional column examples. Next they use flow simulators to view flow through a cross section of an aquifer model. This activity is the final piece in the development of the idea of head driven flow. Students are given data about the thickness and head values of an aquifer member. They plot the aquifer thickness and potentiometric surface then determine the flow direction and estimate the groundwater flow velocity.

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This lesson plan helps students understand the factors that affect water quality and the conditions that allow for different animals and plants to survive. Students will look at the effects of water quality on various water-related activities and describe water as an environmental, economic and social resource. The students will also learn how engineers use water quality information to make decisions about stream modifications.

The purpose of this investigation is to facilitate understanding of the basics of cloud formation involving the changing state of water. This activity should enhance the understanding of the change of state concept, which is important in the study of meteorology.

Students explore materials engineering by modifying the material properties of water. Specifically, they use salt to lower the freezing point of water and test it by making ice cream. Using either a simple thermometer or a mechatronic temperature sensor, students learn about the lower temperature limit at which liquid water can exist such that even if placed in contact with a material much colder than 0 degrees Celsius, liquid water does not get colder than 0 °C. This provides students with an example of how materials can be modified (engineered) to change their equilibrium properties. They observe that when mixed with salt, liquid water's lower temperature limit can be dropped. Using salt-ice mixtures to cool the ice cream mixes to temperatures lower than 0 °C works better than ice alone.

Students learn about porosity and permeability and relate these concepts to groundwater flow. They use simple materials to conduct a porosity experiment and use the data to understand how environmental engineers decide on the placement and treatment of a drinking water well.

The simulation has several conditions in which students are able to collect and analyze data. The first of these scenarios models the water table in an area where there has been no human development. Students observe the annual, cyclical pattern of the water table over a five-year time period, and then use this as the control for comparison to other scenarios. Students then investigate scenarios in which a city, or a city plus a farm, are added. Students can choose to add wells to the city and the farm and select well pumping rates to meet human consumption needs in the city. Wells that are added in the farm scenario have predetermined pumping rates and are active during the growing season only.

As students add wells and gather data, they observe the effects on the wetlands, outflow of the river, and changes to the water table. When a single cell on the map is selected, a graph is generated showing water table data over a five year period for that cell. Using the graphs, students can quantitatively make observations and use data in order to create computational models. They can analyze and interpret the results of pumping over time and the effect on the water table and river outflow. Students can calculate the area of the wetland using the graphs generated by the simulation for each scenario. Examining cross-sections of the map also encourages students to make qualitative observations.

Students can further investigate the relationship between surface and groundwater by adding a drought option to each scenario. Students will collect and analyze data as before, and draw conclusions across the investigated scenarios to understand the effects of drought. After examining current data and news articles from California, students are asked to construct explanations based on evidence collected in the simulation for how the availability of fresh water, in addition to natural hazards such as drought, and climate change, influence human activity.

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