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Earthworks
Earth System Science for Secondary Teachers
Soils
Who: Anyone
What: Is there a relationship between organisms, soil type, and disturbance?
Why: To improve baseline understanding of interactions and soil quality.
Where: Cal-Wood: Gopher hole, road cut, rope course, & burn area. Each area compared with soils from 2 undisturbed sites: Ponderosa/Douglas Fir, Aspen, watershed, and short grassland. At our home site comparable sites could be playground, road site, paths, flowerbeds, nature trails, etc.
When: This could be implemented anytime of the year.
Materials: low tech - microscopes or hand lenses, funnels, cheesecloth, & sieves
Potential Barriers: minimal
Methods: dig, sift, light & heat, identify, record, and analyze
Connections Between Other Sciences: Include weather, pollution problem, geology, water sources, organism, air pollution, human influences, latitude, longitude, and altitude.
Extensions: Soil Identification, soil parents, organics on and in the soil, recovery
Resources:
Description and Sampling of Contaminated Soils, Second Edition, J.R. Boulding
Soil Sampling and Methods of Analysis, M.R. Carter
Grant Ideas: Local and District Grants, Soil Conservation, DNR, DHEC, Conservation Districts, EPA, FHA, Boy Scouts, Local Industry, Wal-Mart - Green Project, Forestry, DOT
Comparative Study of Tree 'Cookie' to Scientific Historical Dates
Julia Eichman (Earthworks 2000)
Who: Freshman intro.
What: Compare the lines of a large tree cookie to scientific historical dates.
When: The first research project in my class.
Where: The classroom, the library, and the computer lab.
How:
- Contact Georgia-Pacific and International Paper to request 10 large tree cookies.
- Contact the local lumber company to obtain local large tree cookies.
- Class discussion on how trees produce rings, and how climate can affect them.
- Students count and mark rings in 10-year increments.
- Students are assigned a decade/century to research, to find important scientific contributions and climate information for the area where their sample grew.
- The student will write their contributions on post-its using a string connect it to the appropriate ring.
- Students will compare researched findings to their cookie analysis of extreme climatic events.
Why:
- One of our state requirements is scientific history and scientists.
- Another one deals with climatic effects on life.
- This project will provide my freshmen a good starting place in doing less teacher guided research.
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About Us
Julia Eichman (Earthworks 2001)