The four exercises give students an opportunity to use their knowledge of graphs, algebra, and maps to solve simple geological problems.

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In this lesson, students will examine the amount of annual and seasonal rainfall in four cities to compare decimals to the hundredths place. Students will add and round digits to the thousandths place. Students will utilize technology by navigating to a specific United States climate website to get relatively current and accurate data. This unit was created as part of the ALEX Interdisciplinary Resource Development Summit.

In this hands-on inquiry-based activity, students face an engineering challenge based on real-world applications. They are tasked with developing a tool they can use to measure the amount of rain that falls each day. This is more of a mini unit than a stand alone activity.

In this service learning project, students, teachers and community members will work together to design and construct a rainwater harvesting system for their school campus.

Research RWH design basics and local conditions
Explore how RWH could be used on your campus and develop a basic design.
Present findings and action plan to community partners, school administration and student body.
Enact the action plan to construct a RWH system on your campus and raise community awareness for water conservation

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The wastewater treatment plant in Hamilton, Ontario is unable to keep up with demand during heavy rainstorms. Combined sewage and stormwater lines in the oldest parts of the city trigger outflow of screened sewage directly into the harbour several times each year, after heavy rains. The harbour itself has been the focus of a remediation effort for several decades. Addressing both industrial legacy pollution and the municipal sewage problem is considered to be key to achieving the harbour's "delisting" as an area of concern in the Great Lake watershed.
This project requires students to help Hamilton residents reduce the pressure on the wastewater treatment plant by reducing the amount of water in the sewage system, the amount of water in the stormwater system or by ensuring that the water is relatively free of chemicals pollution. Some pharmaceuticals have been linked to a feminizing effect on the native fish in the harbour (Purdy, 2009). Students develop realistic strategies for residents to adopt and present their findings to a community partner, the Bay Area Restoration Council, involved with the remediation effort.
Students arrange themselves into groups of three or four during a regular lecture. Any students not present at that lecture will be assigned to a group by the instructor. The groups are then charged with writing and signing a contract detailing the responsibilities and consequences of the work. For example, groups may decide how many meetings may be missed and what happens if a member misses too many meetings. Typically, the most stringent consequence is that a member is removed from the group and must complete the assignment, on time, independently. There was one case of this last year.

The groups then sign up to conduct research into one of four different theme areas: grey water, stormwater, water waste in bathrooms and domestic chemicals. They then develop a strategy for an average household to reduce pressure on the wastewater treatment plant in one of these areas. The strategy must be economically feasible for most residents in the city. The groups meet with myself or a teaching assistant at least once during the project to talk about their plan.
The physical posters and electronic versions are all due on the same day and are then displayed in two separate "poster days." Students are given participation marks for giving feedback on notepads hung at each poster. Community partners form a panel of guest judges and talk to the students about their work, ask questions etc. The teaching assistants and I also visit each poster and ask questions. The guest judges award prizes to the best poster in each category (independent of any marks).
Last year, the best ten posters (judged by the guests and the instructors) were also invited to present their posters at the annual general meeting of the community partner. Members of the public circulated among the posters and talked to students about their work. Members of the press were also present. This annual meeting took place after the semester had ended. The plan for the next version of this project is to send the electronic files out to community partners so they can display them on their web pages or print them out and display them in offices, schools or other public places.

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The Regulating Role of the Ocean on the Climate - Sébastien Carassou This video is part of the Billes de sciences series, produced by the Fondation La Main à la

This project is an opportunity for students to realize the impacts of their lifestyles on the environment. They choose one of the following options to keep track of:

A. Energy consumption (transportation, industrial, or residential hot water),
B. water consumption
C. food consumption
D.Waste production

Then the student records the appropriate personal information from that category for a seven day continuous period. Their submission of 2-3 pages must include their raw data, a summary of their raw data, and a conclusion of what they have learned from the project. Honesty and creativity in presentation are encouraged strongly, even if the data reflects a "non-green" lifestyle. Students are graded equally on length, grammar, relevancy, voice, and content.

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This is a large-scale participatory activity used to prompt students to review what they have learned and to think actively and cooperatively about the connections between the systems we have discussed prior to the activity. It produces a large, visual product students can reflect on.

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In this visualization, users click to drop a raindrop anywhere in the contiguous United States and watch where it ends up. The visualization teaches users about the relationship between precipitation and freshwater in the US.

This is an in-class activity where students learn about the interconnectedness of land use, water quality, and water resource management. Students are assigned a river front parcel of land to develop, unaware that each parcel is connected to someone else's parcel. Each team presents their development choices to the class and learns that all of the river sections are contiguous, leading to discussions about the effects of development and downstream water quality issues.

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An attempt to help students better understand both the nature of river flow and its significance to human society, this lab follows the historic efforts of the Army Corps of Engineers to 'improve' the Mississippi River channel for commercial navigation. Students start by taking a section of the natural river channel and designing a river management program of wing dam and riprap construction that would manipulate the river's natural erosion and deposition processes to force the river itself to carve a deeper, more navigable channel. They then compare their plan to the one designed by the Corps and consider the implications of any significant differences between the two schemes. They are then asked to determine the environmental consequences of their proposed plan on the greater river system.

After this initial exploration, students compare the Corp's early efforts at wing dam and riprap management with its later plan of lock and dam construction and again investigate the impact of the two management schemes on the greater river system. The lab also considers differences in the cultural perspectives of 19th century Dakota and Euro-American communities regarding river systems. In concluding essays, the students must consider the environmental aspects of river management, specifically recognizing what was lost from the river system the Dakota originally knew.

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Images of the James River in Virginia, including one at flood stage, and of potholes, all of which can be used to have the students make observations, estimates, and interpretations.

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Student materials for this exercise include a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with peak discharge data for the Hillsborough River and Curiosity Creek, a .zip file containing two versions (PDF and JPG) of the topographic map of the Sulphur Springs quadrangle, and a simplified sketch map of the quadrangle. The exercise is divided into three parts.
In Part I, students study the Sulphur Springs topographic quadrangle to gain a general idea of the landscape. The students identify drainage divides on the quadrangle and outline the drainage basins on the sketch map.
Part II includes calculating the frequency and probability of various sized floods and creating a recurrence curve using Microsoft Excel charts. Students apply their knowledge to decide whether to buy a house on the floodplain of the Hillsborough River.
In Part III, students use their results to interpret the potential for flooding along the main river and one of its tributaries. Students compare recurrence curves to deduce that having more years of data leads to a more reliable flood forecast. They search online to determine the reasons for particular floods and contrast the effects on the two streams.

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After collecting stream flow data in the field earlier in the semester, students collect new data to compare flow variations of an on-campus stream. Students collect data in the field then calculate flow velocity, and discharge. Students also use maps to calculate stream gradient. Additional activities include plotting clast size data collected in the field on a Hjulstrom Diagram to make connections between stream flow properties and erosion-deposition-and transport in streams. This activity gives students the opportunity to collect and analyze data as they practice quantitative skills by graphing data and calculating unit conversions.

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This activity takes students through the historical and geological events that shaped the areas near the Minnesota and Mississippi river confluence.

This activity provides an approach to teach field methods that is programmed to avoid common pitfalls in teaching field methods to students. The two common problems that are avoided is familiarity with equipment and improved group function.

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This activity could be part of a bigger theme under pollution. The activity could be the water part and the bigger focus could contain all other types of pollution.

Spreadsheets Across the Curriculum module/Geology of National Parks course. Students work with salmon-trace streambed data to study whether removal of a spawning run barrier was effective

Student teams practice water quality analysis through turbidity measurement and coliform bacteria counts. They use information about water treatment processes to design prototype small-scale water treatment systems and test the influent (incoming) and effluent (outgoing) water to assess how well their prototypes produce safe water to prevent water-borne illnesses.

A computer simulator that allows students to adjust the air temperature and dew point to see what type of precipitation would fall to the ground.