Eelgrass Communities

Coastal Ecology—Eelgrass Communities

Summary: Students collect transect data in the field to determine the distribution and abundance of life in eelgrass beds. Suitable sampling sites are available at South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve and other locations on the Oregon coast.

Concepts to teach: Sampling protocol, density, diversity

Goals: Students discover the diversity of plants and animals that thrive in eelgrass beds and explore the adaptations of eelgrass to life in the intertidal zone of an estuary.

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

Specific Objectives:

  1. Students will be able to describe several adaptations that eelgrass plants possess allowing them to thrive within their niche in the estuarine environment.
  2. Students will be able to name several animals and plants that benefit from eelgrass beds and describe the ways in which these plants and animals benefit.
  3. Students will be able to identify several activities which threaten eelgrass beds and suggest possible remedies.
  4. Students will use a simple, widely accepted monitoring technique to assess the relative health of eelgrass beds.

Activity Links and Resources:

Assessment:

  • Use data to generate graphs and to make evidence-based conclusions about the patterns in distribution and abundance of organisms found in the sample area.
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Effects of Erosion

Human Impacts—Effects of Erosion

Summary: Students explore their schoolyard or other local site to determine how human activity may have impacts on animal habitats, animal populations, and/or plant populations.

Concepts to teach: Habitat, adaptation, erosion, impervious surfaces, invasive species, turbidity

Goals: Students will apply their knowledge about land use to their local outdoor site, and assess the impact of human land use and erosion on native species.

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

Specific Objectives:

  1. Locate an example of erosion at a local outdoor site.
  2. Identify human impacts that may contribute to erosion.
  3. Determine the potential impacts of erosion on water quality.

Activity Links and Resources:

  • The Streams Project from Vermont has lesson plans in which students use Google Earth or ArcMap software.
    • Erosion Potential—Students will look at the causes and effects of erosion on water quality. They will be able to pinpoint areas that present a hazard to the watersheds where their school’s stream sites are located.
  • Erosion Inquiry—Students conduct a simple experiment that explores the types of conditions under which erosion occurs in the school yard.
  • How Do Trees Affect Erosion?
    • This lesson plan from soundsalmonsolutions.org outlines the classroom experiment and includes a worksheet and answer key.
    • Have high school students teach this lesson to younger students. Lincoln County teachers in the Oregon Coast Aquatic and Marine Science Partnership (OCAMP) used this experiment for a peer-to-peer teaching activity among 6th and 3rd graders. See their presentation that includes teaching objectives, techniques and student assessments.
  • Resources concerning the potential effects of changing turbidity, stream flow and temperature on aquatic species

Assessment:

  • Use or develop formative assessment probes to gauge student understanding about the water cycle. The following probes from Uncovering Student Ideas in Science, vol. 2 could be applied or modified (to obtain Uncovering Student Ideas in Science publications or access sample chapters, visit the NSTA website):
    • Habitat Change (vol. 2)—explores student understanding of how animal populations are affected when habitats are changed.
    • Beach sand (vol. 1)—the purpose of this probe is to elicit students’ ideas about weathering, erosion, deposition, and landforms. It may be used as is, or modified to better relate to a similar concept found in the schoolyard habitat (pebble size in streams, for example).
  • Probe: Rain on the Parking Lot—the purpose of this OCEP probe is to elicit students’ ideas about how rainwater interacts with impervious surfaces.
  • Students teach the How Do Trees Affect Erosion? activity to younger students.
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Energy Flow

Coastal Ecology—Energy Flow

Summary: Students will construct an energy pyramid and then create a food web of organisms in appropriate trophic levels of the ocean.

Concepts to teach: Food webs, ocean habitats

Goals: Use life history facts to create energy pyramids and food webs. Make connections between energy consumption and ecosystem dynamics in marine environments.

Standards:
H.2L.2

Specific Objectives:

  1. Create energy pyramids based on real life history information.
  2. dentify the interdependence of producers and consumers.
  3. Demonstrate the impact of resource availability changes in natural systems.
  4. Demonstrate an understanding of the effects of outside influences on food webs and ecosystems.

Activity Links and Resources:

Assessment:

  • Assess the created food webs on accuracy, neatness, and creativity. The writing assignment can also be graded or extended to require students to investigate marine food webs further. They could also compare them to other systems and explain the similarities and differences among various systems’ food webs.
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Engineering Ideas

Planning—Engineering Ideas

Summary: Many people live in places that experience floods from rivers, and more people are likely to experience flooding as a consequence of rising sea level. In this topic guide, students brainstorm ways people living near the coast might respond to rising sea level. They are then challenged to design and build a model of a flood-resistant home for a flood-prone community.

Concepts to teach:

  • Crosscutting Concepts
    • Structure and Function, Cause and Effect
  • Disciplinary Core Ideas
    • ETS1.A – Defining and Delimiting Engineering Problems
    • ESS3.B – Natural Hazards
  • Science Practices
    • Asking questions and defining problems, Developing and using models, Constructing explanations and designing solutions

Goals:

  1. People who live near the coast will have to adapt to impacts from rising sea level.
  2. Adaptation strategies might include relocating homes and communities
  3. Some communities can use engineering solutions to respond to sea level rise

Standards: NGSS Performance Expectations

  • 3-5-ETS1-1. Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
  • 4-ESS3-2. Generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of natural Earth processes on humans.

Specific Objectives:
Students will be able to:

  1. Identify different ways coastal communities might react to sea level rise
  2. Design a model structure that could resist flooding
  3. Describe how particular features of a model address a problem

Activity Links and Resources:

  • Activity: Use ideas from the Beat the Flood design challenge to provide a scenario for students to create and build a structure that would withstand a flood.
    • Consider identifying a real coastal community or structure that is at risk for flooding from sea level rise and/or storm surges and using it as the backdrop for the challenge.
    • Decide with or for the students what a successful model design should be able to do and clearly share these design criteria with the students. You can use or make a stream table in which designs can be tested to see if they can remain stable and dry under controlled flood conditions.
    • Provide constraints to the the challenge in terms of materials available (paper, sticks, glue, tape, etc) and the time allowed to build the model. Optional: Assign costs to different materials.
    • Provide opportunities for iteration, improving designs, etc.
    • Collect data on the performance of student structures. Which designs best met the criteria? Identify designs that were most creative, used the least amount of material, were more attractive, etc.

Assessment:

  • Students present their designs and explanations to each other in a classroom “Model Home Expo”
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ENSO and Climate Variability

Science Concepts—ENSO and Climate Variability

Summary: A major source of climate variability in the Pacific Northwest comes from the El Niño / Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Although ENSO is defined by shifts in ocean currents and winds off the western coast of South America, the resulting changes in sea surface temperature (SST) affects our weather in Oregon. In El Niño years, an increase in SST leads to warmer winters and below average rainfall, snowpack, and streamflow in Oregon. As scientific understanding and forecasting of ENSO improves, communities can better plan for short term climate variability.

Concepts to teach:

Goals:

  1. Oregon’s climate is affected by ocean processes centered at distant locations
  2. Complex factors combine to produce patterns of climate variability that can be predicted
  3. The relationship between ENSO and global climate change is not yet well understood

Standards:

Specific Objectives:
Students will be able to:

  1. Describe the El Niño / Southern Oscillation and its affect on Oregon
  2. Use real-time data and forecasts to explain the effects of ENSO on the current year

Activity Links and Resources:

Assessment:

  • Search available resources to find out the forecast for ENSO for the current year. What evidence is used to support forecast predictions?
  • Can We Blame El Niño for Wild Weather includes questions at the end of each section
  • El Niño from NOAA Ocean Explorer includes online quizzes at the end of each section
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Estuary Food Pyramid

Coastal Ecology—Estuary Food Pyramid

Summary: When animals eat plants or other animals in order to survive, there is a flow of food energy through the ecosystem. What starts out as energy from the sun is converted into food energy by organisms that use photosynthesis, and is transferred to other organisms as they consume food. The layers of the resulting food pyramid, called trophic levels, represent available energy. In this activity, students will construct an example of a food pyramid for estuary organisms and examine this flow of energy.

Concepts to teach: Food pyramid, energy flow, trophic level

Goals: Students construct an example of an estuarine food pyramid to depict energy flow through trophic levels.

Standards:
6.2L.2, 7.2L.2, 8.2P.2

Specific Objectives:

  1. There are three major categories of living organisms in an ecosystem and each has a special role. They are: producers, consumers, and decomposers
  2. The food energy produced by producers is cycled through the ecosystem through food chains and complex food webs by way of a series of energy levels called trophic levels.
  3. Energy is lost as it flows through the ecosystem. A food pyramid reflects fewer and fewer organisms at each level, supported by larger numbers of organisms at the trophic level just below.
  4. Students will learn that climate change has the potential for far reaching affects within marine food webs.

Activity Links and Resources:

  • Estuary Food Pyramid lessons from the NOAA Estuary Education website—Students build a food pyramid to examine the flow of food energy through the estuary ecosystem by placing organisms in the correct order on a food web energy pyramid.
  • Estuary Web of Life lessons from Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve address these essential questions:
    • How do the plants and animals in an estuary get energy to live and grow?
    • How are plants and animals dependent upon each other within a system?

Assessment:

  • Assessment included in the Estuary Education lesson.
  • Have students create their own Estuary web of life. Have them demonstrate their knowledge by including at least 1 producer, consumer and decomposer in their 6+ species web.
  • Compare estuarine food webs to freshwater food webs explored in Watersheds: Making the Connection topic guide
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Estuary in a Bottle

Coastal Habitats & Species—Estuary in a Bottle

Summary: This lesson is a fun, hands-on activity to give students and introductory activity to better understand how salty ocean water and fresh water interact and mix in an estuary.

Concepts to teach: Tidal cycles, interconnectedness, estuaries

Goals: Students will be able to describe physical features of fresh, salty and estuary water and explain in simple terms how they mix in an estuary.

Standards:
3.2E.1, 3.3S, 4.3S, 5.3S, 5.2P.1

Specific Objectives:

  1. Students will be able to describe what an estuary is and where the water comes from.
  2. Students will be able to name and describe two water quality parameters that affect estuary water.
  3. Students will investigate samples of water to determine their temperature and salinity as a measure of water quality.

Activity Links and Resources:

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Expand and Contract

Science Concepts—Expand and Contract

Summary: As the ocean’s temperature increases, its volume expands. In this activity, students heat and measure volume of air in a balloon to demonstrate the concept that heat causes most substances to expand and become less dense. Then they observe a demonstration that shows that liquid water (above 4 degrees C) also expands when heated.

Concepts to teach:

Goals:

  1. When most materials are heated (including water above 4 degrees C ) the volume increases due to a process called thermal expansion.
  2. Thermal expansion is the primary cause of climate induced sea level rise.
  3. A model can demonstrate a scientific concept.

Standards: NGSS Performance Expectations

  • 4-PS3-2.Make observations to provide evidence that energy can be transferred from place to place by sound, light, heat, and electric currents.
  • 5-PS1-1. Develop a model to describe that matter is made of particles too small to be seen.

Specific Objectives:
Students will be able to:

  1. Understand that heat causes most substances to expand and become less dense
  2. Set up a simple data table to record results
  3. Observe that heated water has more volume than cooler water
  4. Explain how sea level rise results in part from thermal expansion

Activity Links and Resources:

  • Activity: Size-changing Science: How gases expand and contract from Science Buddies at Scientific American
    • Students measure the volume of air in a balloon before and after the air has been cooled or heated, and relate the results to the kinetic energy of molecules.
    • Check for potential misconceptions: Ask students to draw a picture of what is going on inside the balloon. That is, a closed balloon has the same number of molecules inside it although the temperature and volume of the balloon changes. Example
  • Demonstration: COSEE’s Thermal Expansion and Sea Level Rise – This experiment demonstrates the relationship between water volume and water temperature.
    • Set up this experiment as a demonstration to illustrate that water also expands when heated. Train a flex camera on the ruler and project the image on the screen for the entire class to follow and collect data.
  • Discuss with students what effect an increase in ocean temperature will have on its volume. If ocean volume increases, where will the ‘extra’ water go?

Assessment:

  • In the experiments, what happened to the balloon volume as the temperature changed?
  • Have students draw pictures of the balloons in the experiments to demonstrate their understanding of density and volume.
  • In the demonstration with liquid water, what happened to the water level when it was heated?
  • What happens to the volume of the Earth’s ocean when the temperature of the water increases? How does this affect sea level?
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Exploring Symbiosis

Coastal Ecology—Exploring Symbiosis

Summary: In this lesson from the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology, “students participate in a game to understand the meanings of different types of symbiosis. Children discover the mean and importance of symbiosis by matching hosts and symbionts based on their respective needs. Symbiosis is an excellent example of the interconnectivity between different plants and animals and their environments.”

This lesson goes more easily if it follows a lesson on food webs which can be found throughout the OCEP modules. By teaching students about food webs prior to this lesson, students would already have some understanding of the complex interconnected relationships found between organisms.

Concepts to teach: Community interactions, food webs, symbiosis, adaptations, mutualism, parasitism, commensalism

Goals: “Discover which plants and animals have symbiotic relationships and how this impacts each organism. Explore the advantages and disadvantages of different types of symbiosis.”

Standards:
3.2L.1, 4.2L.1, 5.2L.1

Specific Objectives:

  1. Students will define symbiosis.
  2. Students will be able to identify 3 types of symbiosis (mutualism, parasitism and commensalism) and give examples of each relationship.

Activity Links and Resources:

  • The lesson goes more easily if it follows a lesson on food webs. See the Recipe for an Ocean topic guide for an example.
  • Exploring Symbiosis from the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (OIMB)
    • Symbiosis Stories Power Point available on the OIMB website

Assessment:

Assessments included in the OIMB curriculum:

Have students divide a sheet of paper into three columns and head each column with a type of symbiosis (mutualism, commensalism, parasitism). They can then put all the pairs of organisms on the board into one of the categories. Discuss the impacts on both organisms for each of the different types of symbiosis. The impacts on both organisms can be denoted with +/+, +/0, and +/- for each symbiosis type. These follow-up exercises help drive home the main points, but even without these, students grasped the concept of symbiosis. This lesson kept them engaged for 45 minutes, aided by the game atmosphere.

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Field Trip Sites

Place—Field Trip Sites

Summary: Planning a field trip to learn about the Oregon coast? Connect students with your field trip destination prior to your visit, to better prepare them for the experience and to reduce some of the novelty that could inhibit effective use of time while on site.

Concepts to teach: Preparation Phase, spatial location of field trip site, watershed, use of equipment

Goals: It will be clear to the students where they are going on their field trip, what they can expect to see and do there, and what behaviors and actions will be expected of them.

Standards:
SS 03.GE.01
SS 05.GE.01

Specific Objectives:

  1. Locate the field trip destination on a map and connect it with the school through both a land and water route.
  2. Preview features of the field trip site through the institution’s website, video, and/or personal contact with staff.
  3. Practice using skills and new equipment at a familiar site prior to the trip.

Activity Links and Resources:

  • B-WET Meaningful Watershed Education Experiences: BWET MWEEs—This document outlines the importance of Preparation, Action, and Reflection phases for experiential learning.
    • Connect your local field experiences with distant trips to the coast. Compare and contrast field sites through data collection, journaling, or other activities.
  • OCEP Meaningful Watershed Education Experiences: OCEP MWEEs—Steps 3, 4, and 5 of this document describes some specific goals for the Preparation phase of field experiences.
  • Research Based Field Trip Challenges and Recommendations
  • The following is a list of OCEP partner institutions, most of which offer educational programming for K-12 classes on field trips. Contact the institutions directly to set up a field trip and to access pre-visit materials. Some OCEP institutions may be able to provide a web-based meeting between their staff and your classroom prior to your visit. View a map with the location of all the OCEP institutions.

Assessment:

  • Discuss with students what they know and how they feel about the field trip site, and address misconceptions and concerns.
  • Use field equipment properly to collect reliable data in a familiar environment.
  • Generate a list of equipment, protocol for collecting data and/or driving directions to the field site
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