Planning—Adopt a Wetland

Summary: Students adopt a wetland and collect data to help determine the amount of carbon sequestered by the wetland, and engage in water quality monitoring to promote the efficiency of carbon sequestration.

Concepts to teach:

• Crosscutting Concepts
  • Cause and Effect
• Disciplinary Core Ideas
  • ESS3.C – Human Impacts on Earth Systems
• Science Practices
  • Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions

Goals:

1. Human actions can affect the health of marine wetland ecosystems
2. Healthy marine wetland ecosystems sequester carbon and help to offset the effects of increased carbon in the atmosphere

Standards: NGSS Performance Expectations

• MS-ESS3-3. Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.

Specific Objectives:
Students will be able to:

1. Identify a field site that could benefit from habitat assessment and/or restoration
2. Engage in data collection and/or restoration efforts
3. Design a solution for a problem at the field site that is associated with climate change

Activity Links and Resources:

• Reading:
  • B. Chappell, 2013. KLCC article Rate of coastal wetlands loss has sped up, U.S. study says, based on a wetlands report from USFWS and NOAA
• Review the Blue Carbon and the Citizen Biomonitoring topic guides
• Bringing Wetlands to Market curriculum—Activities in this curriculum include adopting a wetland to measure the amount of carbon sequestered, and to promote the efficiency of carbon sequestration through water quality monitoring.
  • Stewardship Projects—Lesson 4.3 provides Ideas for ways students can serve as stewards of a local wetland area.
  • Adopt a Wetland Stewardship Project and Field Study—Students develop their own research question to be answered in the field
  • Field Activity: How much carbon is in the soil?
    • Guidance document: Adopt a Wetland Student-Designed Studies and measuring carbon content in plants
    • Coring for Carbon—In teacher workshops, OCEP used this protocol developed by OIMB’s Craig Cornu to determine the percentage of organic material in salt marsh vs. upland soils. Download the Student worksheet and the Group data spreadsheet used to record sample data and calculate percentages.
• Activity: Wetland Investigations: Hydrology from the SMILE program at Oregon State University. Water quality can affect a wetland’s ability to efficiently sequester carbon.
• Activity: Score One for the Estuaries from NOAA Estuaries Education describes how middle school students can become stewards of estuaries. Includes Climate Extension sections.

Assessment:

• How much carbon is stored in your study site? How did you arrive at this estimate?
• How does the amount of carbon stored in your wetland compare to the amount of carbon stored in a non-wetland area?
• What is the estimated value of the carbon stored in your study site? How did you come to this estimate, what are the limits on the number, and what information do you need to make a more accurate valuation?
• What does the water quality tell you about human impacts on the study site?
• What other benefits and services does your adopted wetland provide?

Place—Algae in Your House

Summary: No matter how far away we might live from the beach, we are culturally connected to the ocean and its resources. Students examine the contents of their kitchen cupboards to find evidence of the ocean’s influence.

Concepts to teach: Nutrition, social studies

Goals: Students discover that although we sometimes can neither smell nor taste them, many ingredients in our foods and household products come from the sea.

Standards:
S3.3S.1, S3.3S.2, S3.4D.2
S4.3S.1, S4.3S.2
S5.3S.1, S5.3S.2

Specific Objectives:

1. Inventory the types and variety of seafood consumed at home.
2. Find three products at home or school that contain ingredients derived from marine algae.

Activity Links and Resources:

• There are Algae in Your House—In this lesson plan from Smithsonian’s Ocean Planet, students read food labels carefully to find out how many products contain algae.

Assessment:

• Survey the students’ personal experiences with marine products. Offer a checklist of seafood to find out which types students have eaten before, eat regularly, or have never tried. Ask students to list all the products from the ocean they can find in their kitchens.

Place—Algae in Your House

Summary: No matter how far away we might live from the beach, we are culturally connected to the ocean and its resources. Students examine the contents of their kitchen cupboards to find evidence of the ocean’s influence.

Concepts to teach: Nutrition, social studies

Goals: Students discover that although we sometimes can neither smell nor taste them, many ingredients in our foods and household products come from the sea.

Standards:
H.3S.1, H.3S.2, H.3S.3

Specific Objectives:

1. Inventory the types and variety of seafood consumed at home.
2. Find three products at home or school that contain ingredients derived from marine algae.

Activity Links and Resources:

• There are Algae in Your House—In this lesson plan from Smithsonian’s Ocean Planet, students read food labels carefully to find out how many products contain algae.

Assessment:

• Survey the students’ personal experiences with marine products. Offer a checklist of seafood to find out which types students have eaten before, eat regularly, or have never tried.
• As a pre-activity homework task, ask students to list all the products from the ocean they can find in their kitchens.

Coastal Ecology—Arctic Ocean Ecology

Summary: Students analyze data from the Arctic Ocean expeditions to make inferences about productivity and nutritional relationships among three biological realms of the Canada Basin of the Arctic Ocean.

Concepts to teach: Food webs, trophic levels, sea-ice realm, pelagic realm, benthic realm, nitrogen isotopes

Goals: Students will examine data collected from Arctic Ocean Explorations to describe ecological relationships among three realms.

Standards:

Specific Objectives:

1. Students will be able to describe how ratios of stable nitrogen isotopes can be used to study trophic relationships between marine organisms.
2. Given data on stable nitrogen isotope ratios, students will be able to make inferences about trophic relationships between organisms and habitats.
3. Students will be able to compare and contrast organisms in sea ice, pelagic, and benthic communities in terms of feeding strategies and consequent stable nitrogen isotope ratios.

Activity Links and Resources:

• Being Productive in the Arctic Ocean from NOAA Ocean Explorer
  • Students identify major factors that limit primary productivity in the Arctic Ocean, and use data to infer which factors are having a limiting effect
• What’s Eating You? lesson plan from NOAA Ocean Explorer
  • Students use ratios of nitrogen isotopes to make inferences about trophic relationships between three realms in the Arctic Ocean.

Assessment:

• Assessment opportunities included in the lesson plans.

Human Use of Resources—Beach Bill

Summary: For many Oregonians, one of the primary ways they connect with the ocean is through recreational tourism. Over one million vacationers visit Oregon’s beaches each year. This topic guide explores the history and unique legislation concerning public beach access in Oregon.

Concepts to teach: Beach bill, legislation, public access, history

Goals: Students discover the story of how Oregon’s beaches have been used for transportation, recreation, and the harvesting of natural resources. The passage of the 1967 Beach Bill continues to affect the way people interact with Oregon beaches today.

Standards:
SS.08.CG.06, SS.08.HS.07, SS.08.HS.08, SS.08.SA.04

Specific Objectives:

1. Identify the early practical and legislative relationship between the Oregon Department of Transportation and Oregon’s beaches.
2. Describe the implications of the 1967 Beach Bill
3. Recognize that public beach access in Oregon is unique compared to many other coastal U.S. states.

Activity Links and Resources:

• Discuss with students their ideas about who owns and cares for the health of Oregon’s beaches.
• Protecting Oregon Beaches – This web exhibit from Oregon State Archives explores how Oregonians use the beaches and their efforts to protect them.
  • Slide 27 focuses on the Beach Bill
  • Oregon Beach Bill 0riginal text
• Oregon Experience: The Beach Bill—This 28 minute video from OPB first broadcast in Nov 2007 has been archived and can be watched online.
• Dec 2016 Article: Naturalist Touts the Oregon Beach Bill

Assessment:

• Who uses the beach? Who owns the beach? Explore these questions with concept maps.
• Write a persuasive essay answering “Who owns the beach?” from a personal perspective, or that of a beachfront property owner, recreational fisher, tourist, legislator, or other stakeholder.