NOAA Presents Weather Ready Chesapeake Teacher Workshops

January 7th, 2013 by Bart Merrick

Be weather ready in your classroom this year!

Weather affects our daily lives in so many ways. Sometimes the weather makes a day at the beach, on the water, at the park, or in the yard an absolute joy, and sometimes we are glued to the television, computer, or phone watching a storm come our way and preparing for what it may bring.

This winter, the NOAA Environmental Science Training Center, in partnership with the National Weather Service and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, will offer a series of workshops for environmental educators on weather and weather safety in the Chesapeake Bay.

This two-part workshop series will bring together educators and scientists from throughout the region to explore the science that drives our understanding of the weather system, the way it impacts the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and discuss ways to incorporate that science into education programming for students, teachers, and the general public.

One additional reason to attend these workshops is that they will be held at the brand new Center for Weather and Climate Prediction. This is the place where information from around the world is collected so that the science professionals within can provide a seamless suite of environmental analysis, diagnostics, and forecasts from the surface of the sun to the depths of the ocean floor.

Session 1 in the workshop series will be held on January 24. During this workshop we will focus on weather observations, forecasting, and predictions.   Click on the link below to register or learn more about Session 1.

Register for Session 1 Here

Session 2 will be held on February 14th. Don’t forget to add this to your calendar as well, and check the NCBO website for details as they evolve. Click on the link below to register or learn more about Session 2.

Register for Session 2 Here

If you have any questions about this workshop, or the Environmental Science Training Center programming, please contact Bart Merrick at bart.merrick@noaa.gov or 410-259-3142.

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Bart Merrick is an Education Coordinator for the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office.

Flooding in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed: Teach About It!

October 10th, 2011 by Sarah

Chesapeake Research Consortium Staffers take a break from bird watching on a flooded pier to pose for a photo during an outing to Jug Bay Wetland Sanctuary.

Last week, Margaret Enloe, the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Communications Director, contributed an excellent guest blog about the impacts September’s flooding event had on the Bay.   Now that you understand some of the Bay dynamics that may have been influenced by the recent influx of water, sediment, nutrients, and contaminants, let’s examine how you can convey this information to your students.

Lesson Plans

Don’t worry; you are not up a flooded creek without a paddle. There is a wealth of lesson plans available to help you teach about flooding, many of which are aligned with national content standards!  Here are a few samples to help you get started:

  • Flood! – In this Discovery Education lesson plan, students in grades 6-8 will discover that different types of soil have different capacities for retaining rainwater. At the end of the lesson, they should also understand that if the soil in an area is already saturated with rainwater, flooding problems can ensue.
  • Floods: Rising Waters and You – 9-12 graders will investigate the relationships between human-made structures and flood waters in these PBS American Field Guide Lessons.
  • Flood! Classroom Activity – Students will construct a model of a river system and explore the use of manmade levees in this NOVA Teachers lesson plan.
  • Floods – Young students can learn about and play games related to floods on FEMA’s For Kids website.  Children can read “The River Rises; The Disaster Twins’ Flood Story,” take a flood math quiz, or play the “Water, Wind, and Earth Game.”
  • What is a Flood Plain? – Its not all science when if comes to flooding.  PBS has developed this lesson for 7-12 grade classrooms that wish to address content related to economics and/or geography.
  • Ancient Flood Stories – National Geographic has provided this lesson to help educators discuss the evidence that ancient floods may have helped to create the Black Sea. Students will practice their creative writing by composing stories about what it might have been like immediately before and during the flood.

On September 21, 2011 Chesapeake Research Consortium staffers hiked along the flooded Railroad Bed Trail in Jug Bay Wetland Sanctuary.

Ask a Scientist

Remember to end your flooding lesson by “bringing it local!” Discussing the impacts that September’s flooding had on the Chesapeake Bay, and on areas within the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, will provide your students with a real-world example that they have experienced.  Ask your students if their families took any steps to prepare for the flooding (see FEMA’s Flood website for helpful safety tips), or discuss what happened on school grounds.  This can help bring your flooding lesson to life, and ensure that it is relevant to your students.

Another great way to get your students interested in learning about floods and our local watershed is to have them interact with professionals who work in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) related fields.  The Chesapeake Bay Program Partnership has many experts across the watershed who can answer your class’s emailed questions about the response of the streams, rivers and the Bay to the extreme rainfalls and flood conditions.  You can have your class assemble a list of their questions, and email them to us using this online form.  The Chesapeake Bay Program has experts on the following flooding-related topics:

  • River flow, flood conditions, loads of pollutants, comparison of other major flood events
  • Impacts of flood event on MD’s Bay waters and living resources
  • River monitoring in MD
  • Impacts of flood event on VA’s Bay waters and living resources
  • River monitoring in VA
  • River monitoring in PA
  • Monitoring in PA and New York
  • Overall watershed-wide effects and how CBP partners are monitoring the impacts
  • Data and info from NOAA Bay monitoring buoys, research vessels, and satellite imagery
  • Impacts on the Bay/other contacts in the watershed for more information
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Sarah Brzezinski works for the Chesapeake Research Consortium as the Chesapeake Bay Program's Fostering Stewardship and Education Workgroup Team Staffer. She also serves as the content manager of Bay Backpack.

Flooding in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed: Impacts on the Bay

October 3rd, 2011 by Margaret Enloe

During the flooding event on September 9, 2011, nutrients, sediment, garbage, and debris were washed downstream from the Susquehanna River into Chesapeake Bay at a near-record rate. Image courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory.

Near record flow of the Susquehanna River was measured by the USGS on the morning of Friday, September 9th. River flow at Conowingo Dam, where the river enters the Chesapeake Bay, was 775,000 cubic feet per second (CFS)!  2011 will most likely be one of the highest annual flow years on record for the Susquehanna River, primarily as a result of both the September tropical storms and a wet spring across the watershed.  In addition to the Susquehanna, high river flows were measured throughout other parts of the six-state Chesapeake Bay watershed. Your class can investigate real-time streamflow data at a site near your school by using the USGS WaterWatch website.

Likely Impacts on the Bay

Last month’s blog reported that the Chesapeake Bay received a short term water quality boost from Hurricane Irene due to the physical mixing of the Bay’s waters by extreme winds and waves that sent oxygen-rich surface waters into the deeper channels that are normally lacking oxygen at this time of year.  It is true that the physical mixing that resulted from Hurricane Irene did increase the amount of dissolved oxygen near the bottom of the Bay; however the shear magnitude of the more recent flood waters, combined with the loads of nutrients and sediments, will likely have a negative effect on the Bay’s health.  We will only understand the true impacts with the passage of time and through the combined monitoring and assessments by the Chesapeake Bay Program’s many partners.

Things to Watch:

  • Of potential concern to the next year’s crop of underwater bay grasses is the physical scouring of the Bay bottom (particularly in the Susquehanna Flats and the upper tidal Potomac River) resulting in the removal of vegetation living below the sediment surface—the ‘seeds’ for next spring’s plants.
  • The Bay’s oyster bars and other important hard bottom habitats will likely get a new layer of silt covering them in the coming days and weeks ahead, which will directly impact oyster and other bottom dwelling organisms.
  • Much of this sediment will stay around and, with the help of winds and tidal currents, find itself back up in the water column as early as this coming fall and well into the next year.
  • The flood of freshwater into a salty Bay can have impacts on the Bay’s critters like oysters which can’t just get up and move if the much lower salinity conditions last for an extended period of time.

Up on the Susquehanna River, the volume of flood waters will scour the bottom, causing sediment and nutrients previously ‘trapped’ behind the Conowingo Dam to be freed and sent down to the Bay.  These released sediments will likely bring not only more nutrients to the Bay, but also long-buried chemical contaminants.

USGS will be taking samples for analysis of bacteria, pesticides and trace metals over the course of the flood event to help understand the chemical contaminant loads entering the Bay from such a major flood event.  Several months from now we will be able to quantify these loads and the potential impact to a much higher degree.

Timing of the Floods Lessens the Opportunity for Further Impacts

When it comes to flood events and their impact on the health of local waterways and the Bay overall, it is timing that makes the big difference in terms of whether there is a short term (weeks to a month) or a long lasting (months to years) impact on the Bay ecosystem.  Based on historical data, we expect and will be monitoring the following:

  • Bay grasses: We are at the end of the underwater Bay grasses peak growing season, so impacts will be fewer than if the flooding occurred in June or July.
  • Living organisms in the Bay: As this is not a major spawning period for Bay living resources, the long term impact on their populations will be minimal.
  • Nutrients & sediment to the Bay: Given that this flood event is happening as the summer season comes to a close, there is less opportunity for long lasting water quality impacts in terms of nutrient and sediment pollution. By the spring, a majority of the nutrients should have worked their way through the Bay system.  Additionally, cooler temperatures, shorter days, reduced biological activity, and cloudy waters should prevent large algal blooms from growing in the excess nutrients.

Be sure to check in with Bay Backpack next week to learn how to teach about flooding in your classroom!

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Margaret Enloe is the Communications Director for the Chesapeake Bay Program / Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay.

Hurricane Irene and Water Quality Monitoring

September 19th, 2011 by Rich Batiuk

This graphic shows how the size of Hurricane Irene changed, and the areas that were potentially affected by sustained winds of tropical storm force (in orange) and hurricane force (in red). Image courtesy of the National Hurricane Center.

When it became clear that Hurricane Irene would move through the Bay region, the Chesapeake Bay Program’s (CBP) monitoring program coordinators, like Bruce Michael at Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources, adjusted the Bay water quality monitoring cruise schedules to get data just following the hurricane.

In the days following the hurricane, recent data from Maryland’s Eyes on the Bay program showed that the Bay received a short term water quality boost from the hurricane.  This is a result of the physical mixing of the Bay’s waters by extreme winds and waves that sent oxygen-rich surface waters into the deeper channels that are normally lacking oxygen at this time of year. Given the timing of this storm, the Bay likely dodged a potentially serious bullet thanks to Irene’s timing, rapid movement through the region, and track

However, we will still have to wait for weeks (mixing up of the water column with good oxygen levels; short term algal blooms), and really months (impact on the next spring’s algal blooms, early summer’s re-growth of underwater Bay grasses, and mid-summer’s dissolved oxygen conditions years), to fully answer the question, “What was the impact of Hurricane Irene (and even the fall 2011 hurricane season) on the Bay?”

Fortunately, the CBP partnership has an extensive monitoring program in place which continues to measure various indicators of the Bay’s health — in this case, prior to the hurricane and in the weeks and months following the storm.

For additional information on Hurricane Irene’s impact on the Chesapeake Bay, please refer to Rich’s complete article, “Impacts of Hurricane Irene on the Health of Chesapeake Bay? Only Time (and Monitoring) Will Tell!” featured on the Bay Blog.

In Your Classroom:

Your students may not be able to monitor the impacts of Hurricane Irene on the Chesapeake Bay, but they can conduct a smaller-scale research project by monitoring the water quality of a stream near your school!  Engaging your students in water quality monitoring can help them learn about pollution, local ecosystems, and stream health.  Have your science class or club monitor water temperature, air temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen, and Secchi Depth, and compare the results from different times of the year or before and after a storm to help them learn about factors that influence water quality.  National Geographic’s FieldScope, a web-based mapping, analysis, and collaboration tool that support geographic investigations, can help your students understand the data they collect.

For additional information on how to start a water quality monitoring program at your school and how to use the data you generate in your classroom, please refer to:

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Rich Batiuk is the Associate Director for Science with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at the Chesapeake Bay Program.

A Frozen Chesapeake Bay

January 31st, 2011 by Sarah

Can you imagine sledding across the Chesapeake Bay? In the winter on 1976-1977 the ice was so thick that a tracto could tow a sled under the Bay Bridge. Image courtesy of Baltimore or Less, photo by Bob Grieser.

During the “Big Freeze” of 1976-1977, people could walk and skate across the ice that covered the Chesapeake Bay. Image courtesy of Baltimore or Less, photo by Bob Grieser.

Students love snow…  and snow days!  Last week, we certainly saw enough of our favorite type of winter weather to capture their attention.  This week, why not try to focus that energy to teach about times when the bay has frozen over?

Did you even know that it is possible for the Chesapeake Bay to freeze over?  It’s true!  During the winter of 1779-1780 ice in the bay was so thick that carriages could be driven over it from Annapolis to Poplar Island.  The winter of 1976-1977 was similarly severe.  Ice on the bay was so solid that the National Guard was mobilized to deliver food and supplies to stranded residents on Smith and Tangier Islands.

Talking about Chesapeake Bay freeze-ups can help teach students about estuaries and salinity. In an estuary, such as the Chesapeake Bay, tributary rivers deliver freshwater that mixes with saltwater from the ocean.  This mixture of freshwater and saltwater is called brackish water.  Saltwater, which is denser then freshwater, sinks below the freshwater.  Mixing between the two can be influenced by tides, winds, currents, waves, temperature, and the amount of freshwater runoff.  Saltwater freezes at a lower temperature then freshwater, and because the Chesapeake Bay is brackish, it rarely freezes over.

It is easy to teach about how waters with different salinities freeze at different temperatures!  To do so, all you need is a freezer, tap water, table salt, a thermometer, masking tape, a permanent marker, and six Tupperware containers/beakers.  Label two of the beakers “Freshwater,” two “Brackish,” and two “Sea Water.”  In the “Sea Water” containers, mix 10 tablespoons of table salt with one cup of water.  Mix 5 tablespoons of table salt with one cup of water in the two “Brackish” containers, and add one cup of water with no salt to the two containers labeled “Freshwater.”  Have students use the thermometer to check the water temperature in each container after 30 minutes, one hour, 24 hours, and 48 hours.  If some ice has formed, try to check the temperature under the water.  Have students discuss how and why ice forms more quickly in waters with lower salinity.  Ask students where they think ice would be more likely to start forming in the Chesapeake Bay: in tributaries or at the bay’s mouth.

Check out the following resources for more information on Chesapeake Bay freeze-ups and for similar lesson plans on salinity:

Lesson Plans:

  • Density and Salinity – This resource from the UCLA Marine Science Center includes multiple activity lessons addressing sea ice, icebergs, conductivity, making and using a hydrometer, and the layering of water.
  • Can Sea Water Freeze? – In this lesson from McREL, students will learn about the unique properties of sea water, including that its freezing point is slightly lower than that of freshwater.
  • Can Sea Water Freeze? – NASA’s Aquarius provides this lesson about how salt and other substances impact the freezing point of water.

News Articles:

Additional Resources:

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Sarah Brzezinski works for the Chesapeake Research Consortium as the Chesapeake Bay Program's Fostering Stewardship and Education Workgroup Team Staffer. She also serves as the content manager of Bay Backpack.

Why Teach About Weather and the Chesapeake Bay?

December 27th, 2010 by Sarah

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge in winter. Image courtesy of terrin in Virginia, Flickr, Creative Commons

After the recent snowfall, winter weather is on all of our minds.  With students (and sometimes teachers) eagerly awaiting the season’s snow days, it is a great chance to bring winter inside the classroom and teach about the impact weather has on the Chesapeake Bay.

Why Should YOU Teach about Weather?

Whether we like it or not, weather affects all of our lives on a daily basis.  Its influence can be as simple as determining if you need to bring an umbrella to work or as complex and important as impacting when animals migrate and when plants reproduce.

The Chesapeake Bay can be a great tool for teaching about the impacts weather can have on an ecosystem.  In the Chesapeake, rainfall affects the volume of water flowing into the bay.  Storms can stir up sediments that can harm shorelines and wildlife. They can contribute so much freshwater (in the form of rain and snow) to the ecosystem that it temporarily lowers the salinity of estuary waters.  Wind can help mix surface waters, increasing bay oxygen levels and impacting turbidity (how cloudy or clear water is).

Weather conditions can also be used to teach students about how we affect bay health. This winter season, as snow and ice melt, teachers can talk to their classes about how the salt and chemicals we use to keep our roads safe for driving can run off into bay waters. Precipitation in the winter and spring can also result in runoff that brings sediment and nutrient pollutants to the bay, greatly affecting summer water quality conditions.

How Can YOU Teach About Weather?

There are many ways to teach about weather in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.  From using data collected with the Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy System (CBIBS) to explore temperature and turbidity to learning about how ocean affects air temperatures, Bay Backpack has a boat load of resources that can help you plan lessons for your class.  Here are some links to help you get started:

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Sarah Brzezinski works for the Chesapeake Research Consortium as the Chesapeake Bay Program's Fostering Stewardship and Education Workgroup Team Staffer. She also serves as the content manager of Bay Backpack.

“Save The Beach” In Your Own Classroom

September 27th, 2010 by Lindsay

Hurricane Earl threatened the Chesapeake in early September this year. Photo source: NASA

The devastation hurricanes can cause in the lives of humans is obvious – the Chesapeake Bay region saw it particularly bad with Hurricane Isabel in 2003. The effects on the environment may be less obvious, but these storms can stir up a lot of sediment that can harm shorelines and wildlife. But aquatic grasses can help lessen those effects by creating a barrier during damaging storms.

A few storms have threatened this year, but so far we’ve escaped unscathed. That doesn’t mean you can’t take the opportunity to teach your students about the effects of hurricanes and the importance of underwater grasses.

In this lesson plan from the Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE), your high school students can participate in a hands-on activity where they get to “Save the Beach” during a hurricane.

Setup for the "Save the Beach" activity, including fan, sand, barrier, and tape sticky side up. Photo source: COSEE

Using many common household items, students must build a barrier representing underwater bay or sea grasses to keep “sediment” (sand) from making its way to the “beach” when a large fan is turned on to simulate a hurricane.

The lesson asks students to make a connection between the way we protect our houses from hurricanes and the way we should protect our shorelines from them. By having students work in small groups to see who can create the best barrier, the lesson plan allows for some friendly competition as well as learning what methods did and did not work.

Once the activity has been completed, students will understand that underwater grasses perform a very important ecological service by stabilize sediments that could otherwise make water murky and difficult for aquatic life to survive.

Additional Resources
COSEE’s Observing the Ocean
Sediment, soil and rocks teaching resources – Bay Backpack
Aquatic grass SAV teaching resources – Bay Backpack

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Lindsay Eney is the Communications Staffer at the Chesapeake Bay Program.

Snow No! A Rough Winter for the Chesapeake

February 10th, 2010 by Krissy
Satellite image of the Chesapeake region taken February 7th, 2010. Photo Credit: NASA GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response

Satellite image of the Chesapeake region taken February 7th, 2010. Photo Credit: NASA GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response

February 2010 is one for the record books.  With nicknames like Snowmageddon, Snowpocalypse, and SnOMG the newspapers are deeming the blizzard that hit this month the end of the world.

The storm that dumped 30 plus inches on the Chesapeake region, almost overnight, can be seen from space thanks to NASA’s Wallops satellite.  This image, take on February 7th, 2010 shows the extent of the winter blast that pounded the area.

Snow extended north into New York, south into Virginia and blanketed the Eastern Shore with fresh powder.  The snow hides the large cities of Baltimore, Washington and Harrisburg, which are usually visible on satellite images as large grey patches. In this image, these major cities are blanketed under the snow hiding the impact we have on the landscape.

Along with being a striking way to view our region, this image also offers up a great learning opportunity for students, showing them how geography and the weather can influence our local waterways.

Can your students answer the following questions about this picture?

  1. Where is the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and what body of water does it empty into?
  2. What long river runs south through New York and Pennsylvania and empties into the top of the Chesapeake Bay?
  3. Why do some of the rivers look brown in color while others appear bluish-green?
  4. What mountain range cuts through the left corner of this image?

If you have more questions submit them through our comments!

Additional Resources:
Daily Satellite Image of the Chesapeake Bay – NASA, MODIS Rapid Response
Weather Related Lesson Plans – Bay Backpack

Answers:

  1. The mouth of the Chesapeake Bay is in Virginia, where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean.
  2. The Susquehanna River, which runs for 444 miles from its source in Cooperstown, NY until it empties into the Chesapeake Bay at Havre de Grace, Md.
  3. Polluted water running off our roadways and parking lots drains into our rivers and streams and eventually the Chesapeake Bay. This polluted water appears brown in color because it is full of sediments and nutrients that wash off the land. Heavy rains and snow melt wash thousands of gallons of polluted water into the Bay each year.
  4. The Appalachian Mountains, which run from Newfoundland 1,500 miles south-west into Alabama. The Appalachians cut through all of the Chesapeake Bay watershed states but Delaware.
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Krissy Hopkins is a former Chesapeake Bay Program Staffer and is currently pursuing her PhD in geology at the University of Pittsburgh.