Through an overview of the components of the hydrologic cycle and the important roles they play in the design of engineered systems, students' awareness of the world's limited fresh water resources is heightened. The hydrologic cycle affects everyone and is the single most critical component to life on Earth. Students examine in detail the water cycle components and phase transitions, and then learn how water moves through the human-made urban environment. This urban "stormwater" water cycle is influenced by the pervasive existence of impervious surfaces that limit the amount of infiltration, resulting in high levels of stormwater runoff, limited groundwater replenishment and reduced groundwater flow. Students show their understanding of the process by writing a description of the path of a water droplet through the urban water cycle, from the droplet's point of view. The lesson lays the groundwork for rest of the unit, so students can begin to think about what they might do to modify the urban "stormwater" water cycle so that it functions more like the natural water cycle. A PowerPoint® presentation and handout are provided.

Students learn that newly introduced species can affect the balance of an ecosystem and that the changes can be positive or negative. Students learn that humans introduce species for a variety of reasons including to solve problems.

This lesson series is for the Openscapes Champions program, an open data science mentorship program for science teams.

Openscapes Champions is a professional development and leadership opportunity for teams to reimagine data analysis & stewardship as a collaborative effort, develop modern skills that are of immediate value to them, and cultivate collaborative and inclusive research communities. Cohorts are ~7 research teams (~35 total participants including team leads and members) that convene remotely to explore open data science tooling and practices together. This is a remote-by-design program since its launch in 2019.

The Series is written (and always improving) to be used as a reference, to teach, or as self-paced learning.

Openscapes is co-directed by Julia Stewart Lowndes and Erin Robinson. It is operated by the National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis (NCEAS) and was incubated by a Mozilla Fellowship awarded to Lowndes in 2018.

The deep continental margins were once perceived as monotonous mud slopes of limited ecological or environmental concern. Technological advances now reveal unexpected diversity, with a mosaic of lush habitats and ecosystems that support varied and unusual species fundamental to the health of the ocean and our own lives. Join Scripps biological oceanographer Lisa Levin as she reveals how changes in ocean temperature and chemistry, as well as growing economic opportunities, are placing new pressures on deep-ocean ecosystems, just as we are getting to know them. (56 minutes)

Plankton to Plastic Pollution STEM Kit. The Natural Sciences Education & Outreach Center collaborates with CSU faculty, National Parks and citizen science programs to translate their current scientific research into unique STEM experiences for students in the form of Educational Kits that can be checked out. Each kit contains just about all of the materials needed (minus common things like water and paper towels) to explore some really interesting scientific research topics. The kits are available for teachers and informal educators in Colorado to check out for a duration of a week by submitting either a local pickup form or a delivery form available at the linked website. Please use the contact information on the STEM Kit overview page to learn more. https://www.cns-eoc.colostate.edu/stem-kits/ This kit is provided free for educational use. This resource is also available in Spanish in the linked file.

Students see the effects that poor soil, excess/insufficient water, and insufficient light have on a plant’s ability to survive. Students make the connection between caring for crops, successful production, and the role of stewardship in Wyoming’s agriculture.

Students learn how farming has changed over time and how technology enhances the tools that farmers use enabling them to be even better stewards of the land.

Students will show their appreciation for ranchers as good stewards when being responsible with their livestock and land.

Reasons for the Seasons. This is the Lesson 3 Digging Deeper activity, from Unit 4 Agriculture and the Seasons, from the DIGS (Developing Individuals, Growing Stewards) AmeriCorps Curriculum from CSU. The curriculum focuses on introducing students in grades 3-5 to Colorado agriculture, industry and environmental issues. The curriculum is matched to State Standards 2021. The curriculum upon request. Visit: https://engagement.colostate.edu/programs-old/developing-individuals-growing-stewards/

Seasonal Systems. This is the Lesson 1 Exposure Activity, from Unit 4 Agriculture and the Seasons, from the DIGS (Developing Individuals, Growing Stewards) AmeriCorps Curriculum from CSU. The curriculum focuses on introducing students in grades 3-5 to Colorado agriculture, industry and environmental issues. The curriculum is matched to State Standards 2021. The curriculum upon request. Visit: https://engagement.colostate.edu/programs-old/developing-individuals-growing-stewards/

Planting seeds can be hard work! They require a lot of care and a lot of patience, as we will learn from our story this week. During this virtual Read & Seed we will read The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson. Participate in a Movement/Music/Finger Play activity by singing a garden song, and create seed tape to plant and start your own garden. This lesson is aimed at connecting young learners to their natural world and promote school readiness skills. This Read & Seed activity is presented by The Gardens on Spring Creek by the City of Fort Collins. https://youtu.be/3ER8I--SRbU

Planting seeds can be hard work! They require a lot of care and a lot of patience, as we will learn from our story this week. During this virtual Read & Seed we will read The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss and Crockett Johnson. Participate in a Movement/Music/Finger Play activity by singing a garden song, and create seed tape to plant and start your own garden. This lesson is aimed at connecting young learners to their natural world and promote school readiness skills. This Read & Seed activity is presented by The Gardens on Spring Creek by the City of Fort Collins. https://www.fcgov.com/gardens/files/read-seed-website-seed-tape.pdf?1590515650

Remove a problem species and make a natural soap! Lindsay Hollister, JPPM's horticulturalist, shares how to identify the invasive English Ivy vine and make a soap from the saponins it naturally produces. These molecules naturally deter predators from eating the species, but their structures also make them bond to both waters and fats. Consider using the video or conducting the activity at your location as an integrated introduction to learning about biodiversity and the structures of molecules or atoms, since saponins are valuable as a soap because they are able to bond with either water or fats/lipids.

Always be sure you can successfully identify a plant before using it and take precautions to avoid negative reactions.

This resource is part of Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum’s open educational resources project to provide history, ecology, archaeology, and conservation resources related to our 560 acre public park. JPPM is a part of the Maryland Historical Trust under the Maryland Department of Planning. If you evaluate or use this resource, please respond to this short (4 question!) survey at bit.ly/3GrTjPk

Students will understand that livestock face multiple challenges and many people are involved in solving those challenges.

Students define the role of a steward in Wyoming agriculture through their advertisements and presentations.

Openness in research can lead to greater reproducibility, an accelerated pace of discovery, and decreased redundancy of effort. In addition, open research ensures equitable access to knowledge and the ability for any community to assess, interrogate, and build upon prior work. It also requires open infrastructure and distributed access; but few institutions can provide all of these services alone. Providing a trustworthy network for perpetual availability of research data is critical to ensuring reproducibility, transparency, and ongoing inquiry.

Increased attention on the importance of open research and data sharing has led to a proliferation of platforms to store data, materials, etc., with limited technical integration. This can hinder data sharing, but also complicate coordination with local library expertise and services, thus hampering curation and long-term stewardship.

For example, the open source OSF enables researchers to directly create and manage research projects and integrates with other tools researchers use (Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, etc.), but lacks the ability to archive that material locally at a researcher’s institution. Long-term stewardship and preservation requires multiple copies of data archived in different locations, and creating archives seamlessly would be ideal.

COS and IA are working together to address these preservation and stewardship challenges by providing open, cooperative infrastructure to ensure long-term access and connection to research data, and by supporting and promoting adoption of open science practices to enhance research reproducibility as well as data sharing and reuse.

In this webinar, attendees will learn about both the technical and practical aspects of this collaborative project connecting the researcher tool OSF and the preservation system of Internet Archive. We demonstrate how researchers can improve the openness and reproducibility of their research through preregistration, and how those preregistrations are preserved with Internet Archive. We answer questions and explore use cases for how this powerful workflow can support library curation and stewardship of open research.

Students understand that organisms can survive only in environments in which their particular needs are met. Students understand that the needs of plants and animals are different but interdependent.