This short demonstration will open students' eyes to the distribution of various water sources on our Earth, but also the limited amount of fresh water for our daily use.
The majority of Earth's surface is covered by water, but only a small percentage of this water is freshwater. In this lesson, students will learn where saltwater and freshwater are found. Then they will use models to show the distribution of different types of water in different reservoirs and depict this information using bar graphs and pie charts. Finally, they will use their data as evidence to support the idea that freshwater should be conserved. This lesson was created as part of the 2016 NASA STEM Standards of Practice Project, a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.
Students are provided with a 3D perspective of a virtual place, descriptions of geologic and cultural aspects, and a table with water-table elevations in groundwater and contaminant levels in water wells, springs, and rivers. Students use these data to contour water-table elevations, determine the direction of groundwater flow, and identify industrial sites that are likely sources of contamination. They then propose a remediation plan and identify water wells that are likely to remain uncontaminated in the future.
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Drinking water comes from many different sources, including surface water and groundwater. Environmental engineers analyze the physical properties of groundwater to predict how and where surface contaminants will travel. In this lesson, students will learn about several possible scenarios of contamination to drinking water. They will analyze the movement of example contaminants through groundwater such as environmental engineers must do (i.e., engineers identify and analyze existing contamination of water sources in order to produce high quality drinking water for consumers).
Students are introduced to the concept of a dam and its potential benefits, which include water supply, electricity generation, flood control, recreation and irrigation. This lesson begins an ongoing classroom scenario in which student engineering teams working for the Splash Engineering firm design dams for a fictitious client, Thirsty County.
If water covers 70-75% of our planet, then why should we be concerned about water quality and conservation? This lesson helps students understand that 97% of our water is present on Earth in the form of salt water, and therefore, unavailable for helping support life on Earth. Another 2% of Earth's water is frozen, which leaves us approximately 1% in groundwater, lakes, streams, and water vapor. This lesson was adapted from a lesson series from 4-H SET (California) . This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.
This exercise uses an analytical method (Grubb, 1993) and Excel to calculate the capture zone shape for a TCE remediation well in Wooster, Ohio. The case study description given in an extensive PowerPoint presentation. The capture-zone equations are programmed by the student into an Excel worksheet and used to delineate the contributing area of a contaminant recovery well. Students can then experiment with by varying the pumping rate, hydraulic conductivity, and hydraulic gradient to better understand the sensitivity of these parameters on capture-zone shape.
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In this exercise, we use the USGS real-time data available online, and use it to construct a rating curve for the Walla Walla river near Touchet. We then make a simple model of flood inundation in ArcGIS for the area around our gaging station.
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This Yellowstone National Park website contains thousands of photographs of the Park. Images are organized by category including fire, thermal features, mammals, park structures, petrified trees, water, weather, scenics, and more. The photographs may be freely downloaded and more are being added through time.
Contamination in drinking water sources or watersheds can negatively affect the organisms that come in contact with it. The affects can be severe causing illness or, in some cases, even death. It is important for people to understand how they can contribute to the contaminants in drinking water and what treatment can be done to counter these harmful effects. Students will learn about the various methods developed by environmental engineers for treating drinking water in the United States.
Students perform a macroinvertebrate survey to gauge the health of a local river. They collect water samples and count macroinvertebrates to learn how the health of a river's ecosystem can be determined by its river insect population.
This is the first teacher's guide book of the collection “The climate in our hands”, a series of volumes on the topic of climate change. The aim of this guide book is to support teachers in carrying out a range of activities on climate change and the ocean and cryosphere in their classrooms, and targets students from the upper end of primary school to the end of lower-secondary school (ages 9 to 15).
Students work in groups to develop posters that communicate their concept of landscape following several field labs (soils, sediment analysis, river discharge, vegetation survey, aquatic life) at one location. They must consider four categories: landscape interactions, landscape history, life, and perspectives/communication.
(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)