In this unit, students will review mock proposals that deal with some …
In this unit, students will review mock proposals that deal with some aspect of the role of carbon in the environment. Each proposal is based on actual actions proposed to mitigate some aspect of carbon consumption and/or climate change, and as such are considered "real world" scenarios (although somewhat generalized for this exercise). Students will review each proposal for the possible societal, economic, and moral implications if the proposal was pursued on a large scale -- for instance, by a single nation or collection of countries. Additionally, students will make recommendations to a fictitious governmental panel on the merits and pitfalls of each proposal and provide well-supported recommendations about whether that government panel should pursue or reject the proposal. Instructors can use this unit as a stand-alone activity, or as a summary activity to comprehensively review, discuss, and assess material presented in this module's earlier units.
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Students are introduced to the concept of geoengineering, "the deliberate large-scale intervention …
Students are introduced to the concept of geoengineering, "the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth's climate system, in order to moderate global warming" (The Royal Society). The goal is for them to leverage their acquired knowledge from previous units in physical oceanography, ocean chemistry, biodiversity, and ecosystem ecology to evaluate the validity and/or the risk of geoengineering (systems thinking). Current and future generations will be required to make informed decisions on whether they support strategies that result in irreversible changes in Earth's carbon cycle.
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After completing this activity students should be able to: - demonstrate sediment …
After completing this activity students should be able to:
- demonstrate sediment core collection through a field exercise (whether or not you use that core's data). - recognize potential errors and contamination risks and identify ways to minimize them. - distinguish different layers within the cores and use appropriate terminology to describe them. - identify cyclical variations in the core layers, and correlate those with remotely sensed lake temperature data over a regional spatial scale. - estimate lake evaporation rates from lake temperatures. - reconstruct regional lake evaporation based on core layers. - evaluate the effectiveness of point observations to represent regional paleoclimate
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This course examines the policy, politics, planning, and engineering of transportation systems …
This course examines the policy, politics, planning, and engineering of transportation systems in urban areas, with a special focus on the Boston area. It covers the role of the federal, state, and local government and the MPO, public transit in the era of the automobile, analysis of current trends and pattern breaks; analytical tools for transportation planning, traffic engineering, and policy analysis; the contribution of transportation to air pollution, social costs, and climate change; land use and transportation interactions, and more. Transportation sustainability is a central theme throughout the course, as well as consideration of if and how it is possible to resolve the tension between the three E’s (environment, economy, and equity). The goal of this course is to elicit discussion, stimulate independent thinking, and encourage students to understand and challenge the "conventional wisdom†of transportation planning.
Students conduct autocorrelation and cross-correlation analyses on river discharge and climate indices …
Students conduct autocorrelation and cross-correlation analyses on river discharge and climate indices to test the hypothesis that coastal streams draining mountainous terrain are strong indicators of climatic phenomena. Students must load the data, conduct analyses, and plot the results by writing an efficient MATLAB script, and must "publish" their code into a well-organized, well-commented, .pdf document (or .html on a website).
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In this EarthLabs activity, learners explore the concepts of coral bleaching, bleaching …
In this EarthLabs activity, learners explore the concepts of coral bleaching, bleaching hot spots and degree-heating weeks. Using data products from NOAA's Coral Reef Watch, students identify bleaching hot spots and degree-heating weeks around the globe as well as in the Florida Keys' Sombrero Reef to determine the impact higher-than-normal sea surface temperatures have on coral reefs.
The use of dendrochronology in determining the geologic history of a location. …
The use of dendrochronology in determining the geologic history of a location. The development of an understanding how tree growth can indicate the relationships between climate, geomorphology, ecology and archeology.
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In this lesson, students will first discuss where energy comes from, including …
In this lesson, students will first discuss where energy comes from, including sources such as fossil fuels, nuclear, and such renewable technologies as solar. After this initial exploration, students will investigate the three main types of heat transfer: convection, conduction, and radiation. Students will learn how properties describe the ways different materials behave, for instance whether they are insulators or conductors. Students will complete a crossword puzzle to reinforce their vocabulary in this content area. The class will then focus on the acquisition and storage of energy through the design, construction, and testing of a fully functional solar oven.
Learning Assistants are used to facilitate student discussion in peer instruction during …
Learning Assistants are used to facilitate student discussion in peer instruction during clicker questions (i.e., classroom response systems), by asking Socratic questions, emphasizing reasoning, and probing student thinking.
In this resource, students learn about freshwater resources, how NASA uses satellites …
In this resource, students learn about freshwater resources, how NASA uses satellites to measure precipitation, and how that data can be used in agricultural practices. Students use data from the NASA Global Precipitation Measurement satellite to explore precipitation patterns in two parts of the world and then make recommendations for how to reduce water use in agriculture and in their own lives.
In this activity students download satellite images displaying land surface temperature, snow …
In this activity students download satellite images displaying land surface temperature, snow cover, and reflected short wave radiation data from the NASA Earth Observation (NEO) Web site. They then explore and animate these images using the free tool ImageJ and utilize the Web-based analysis tools built into NEO to observe, graph, and analyze the relationships among these three variables.
This lab follows the second or third lecture on pollen analysis and …
This lab follows the second or third lecture on pollen analysis and Quaternary paleoecology. It should come after students have been introduced to pollen diagrams and covered such topics as: what is pollen, how are pollen grains dispersed, how are pollen records obtained from lakes and bogs, how are modern pollen data sets used to interpret fossil pollen data, and how are pollen diagrams designed and interpreted. This lab serves as an introduction to the pollen database available from NOAA National Climate Data Center World Data Center for Paleoclimatology (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pollen.html ( This site may be offline. ) ). The lab allows students to browse the contents of the SiteSeer pollen data base, which contains site information and summary pollen diagrams. SiteSeer allows searching by Site Name or Contact Person. It also allows limited filtering of the data by Age, Range, Location, and Pollen taxon. SiteSeer is a teaching tool to explain how to use and interpret pollen data. With this familiarity, students can obtain up-to-date information on pollen sites and actual pollen data from the NCDC WDC web page, using the Data Search tool and Web Mapper. This lab exercise focuses on sites in the North American Pollen Data Base (NAPD), showing the many ways one might obtain this information. Working through a set of questions helps students understand the impressive pollen database available to study the vegetation history of North America.
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This activity is a field investigation in which students conduct a plant …
This activity is a field investigation in which students conduct a plant survey of two study plots, analyze their findings through graphing and mathematic models, investigate the impact of human activity in the general area (optional) and generate questions for further investigation of the study plots.
To prepare for this exercise, students do background reading (from journal articles …
To prepare for this exercise, students do background reading (from journal articles selected by instructor) and participate in classroom lectures about various types of qualitative and quantitative paleoclimate data (including rock/sed. type, stable isotopes, and fluid inclusions). Then, they are given the assignment and asked to complete it on their own (or in groups of two). The assignment consists of four paleotemperature curves. One curve is from the Vostok ice core of Antarctica and another represents the GRIP ice core from Greeenland (Jouzel et al., 1987, 1993; Chapellaz et al., 1997). Two halite cores, one from Death Valley and one from Chile, are also represented (Lowenstein et al., 1998, 1999; Hein, 2000). Students answer written questions that ask them to identify coldest and warmest times in the past 150,000 years, that ask them if cores can be correlated, that ask them if they can distinguish local, regional, and global warming and cooling trends. They are also asked how to better resolve paleoclimate data from this time period. The final questions ask students how confident they would feel about using this data to make paleoclimate predictions into the future. After the students have completed in turned in their assignment, we have a class discussion about the exercise, using the questions to guide us. This discussion can be supplemented with predictions from climate models and explanations of different types of paleoclimate data.
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Students explore the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 40 …
Students explore the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 40 years with an interactive online model. They use the model and observations to estimate present emission rates and emission growth rates. The model is then used to estimate future levels of carbon dioxide using different future emission scenarios. These different scenarios are then linked by students to climate model predictions also used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
This is a teaching activity in which students learn about the connection …
This is a teaching activity in which students learn about the connection between CO2 emissions, CO2 concentration, and average global temperatures. Through a simple online model, students learn about the relationship between these and learn about climate modeling while predicting temperature change over the 21st century.
In this lab activity students use the pH scale and the reaction …
In this lab activity students use the pH scale and the reaction of carbon dioxide with water to understand ocean acidification and make predictions regarding the effect of ocean acidification on marine organisms by experimentally determining the effect of pH of calcite dissolution.
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EME 812 explores the main physical principles of core solar energy conversion …
EME 812 explores the main physical principles of core solar energy conversion systems, including direct power conversion photovoltaics, concentrating photovoltaics (CPV), and thermal conversion to electricity via concentrating solar power strategies (CSP). It also covers the fundamentals of enabling technologies such as light concentration, solar tracking, power conversion cycles, power conditioning and distribution. Learning in EME 812 relies on analysis of design and performance of existing solar plants that have been deployed in areas such as the southwestern USA, Spain, and North Africa.
Solar thermal energy is a vast renewable energy resource that has been …
Solar thermal energy is a vast renewable energy resource that has been harvested by human civilizations for centuries. Now as energy conversion technologies quickly develop, we look at solar thermal energy as a significant contributor to the future world's energy profile. Solar heat, when properly collected and stored, can provide cost-effective benefits to a wide array of industrial and residential applications. In EME 811, Solar Thermal Energy for Utilities and Industry, we talk about both the main principles of solar thermal energy conversion and some implementation scenarios, such as utilization of solar heat in buildings, solar cooling, solar desalination, solar drying, and chemical processing.
Cultiva brotes en una bolsa de sándwich transparente. Agentes de Colorado Americorp …
Cultiva brotes en una bolsa de sándwich transparente. Agentes de Colorado Americorp en los condados de Araphahoe, Denver, Garfield, Larimer y Weld. Trabajo apoyado por la Corporación para el Servicio Nacional y Comunitario bajo el número de subvención 18AFHCO0010008 de Americorps. Las opiniones o puntos de vista expresados en esta lección pertenecen a los autores y no representan necesariamente la posición oficial o una posición respaldada por la Corporación o el programa Americorps.
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