Biosphere and Climate
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Curriculum of the week
Title: Off Base
This activity explores the phenomenon of ocean acidification, why it is happening, and what factors into the rate of decrease in oceanic pH. Students will do background research on the subject, and conduct hands-on measurements of changes in pH caused by acetic acid and sodium hydroxide in simulated sea water.
Full Summary
Title: Blooming Thermometers
Grade Level: Middle School
Source: National Center for Atmospheric Research
This activity is part of an NCAR series on climate change over time, and the Little Ice Age. It serves as an introduction to phenology, and an inderstanding of how cultural events are tied to seasonal changes. After creating a list of seasonal natural phenomena, students will examine historical data of the blooming of cherry trees in Japan over one thousand years, recorded because of the annual Hanami celebration.
Student will consider the data, and answer questions about what happened over that time period, and what the known occurrences (blooming time) indicate about climate factors.
For extension, students can identify a local event that occurs regularly in response to climate change, and participate in the GLOBE program, which involves students in collection of phenology data.
Other curriculum studies
Collaborating to teach the ecology of climate change in New England
Climate change, bird-feeders, evolution, and the importance of long-term data sets
Unknown User (adrayton) posted on Feb 16, 2017
When the climate changes, organisms can respond in just a few possible ways: [1] change their behavior in their current habitats — for example, plants may flower earlier or retain their leaves longer to accommodate a longer growing season, and birds may change their migration times; [2] change their ranges — for example, the Carolina wren is now commonly seen in New England,…
previous_entries
Be on the lookout for new visitors: Carolina Chickadees heading north!
Brian Drayton posted on Jan 04, 2016
Over the past few decades, many species have moved into New England from the south, while others have moved within New England, or changed their population numbers. Earlier posts on this blog have reported some examples, and our species inventory includes some other stories. Birds are probably the most noticeable. Many people pay attention to them, and there's lots of ways to share news of species sightings, first appearance in the spring, and so forth.…
A new series of resources — Species briefs
Unknown User (abe.drayton) posted on Apr 24, 2015
On this website, we maintain a list of all New England species for which there is evidence of climate response, as reported in the scientific literature or in other sources (with links to the sources). (Help us keep up to date! Contact us https://external-wiki.terc.edu/display/BAC/Contact+Us if you see a gap!). We believe that in teaching about climate change in our region, the stories of individual species can be interesting and even compelling entry points.…
Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum)
While the long-term impacts are uncertain, over the past few years, warming has led to a longer growing season for sugar maples. Whether that benefit will be cancelled out by drought, or other possible costs associated with climate change is uncertain. Changes in seasons have had a subtler impact on their physiology, however, that we have been able to track through the maple sugar industry.
The seasonal conditions of a below-freezing night and an above-freezing day that produce the reliable sap flow we get our maple syrup and sugar from have been increasingly unreliable. As a consequence of this, sugar makers throughout New England can no longer rely on traditional markers for when to start tapping their sugarbush, and must instead be on the alert for the conditions whenever they arise. Looking into the future, some predict that the viability of the maple sugar industry is moving north with the conditions, and before long, Quebec will have the seasons that made New England a center for syrup production.
Little Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus)
The little brown bat has been hit hard by the white nose syndrome, and are among the species being killed en masse by wind turbines, but in addition to that, recent research has shown that as summer droughts worsen due to climate change, bat populations decline. The reason is fairly simple - when there's a drought, the insect population drops, and so bats have to put much more effort into finding food, and less into reproduction - the end result is fewer new bats every year that's low on water.
The impacts of a reduction in bat populations are many. The most obvious is that they eat mosquitoes, which are notorious disease vectors, carrying such classics as malaria, equine encephalitis, West Nile virus, and more. On top of that, however, is the recent revelation that bats eat enough agricultural pests that if they were to go extinct (which is likely for the little brown bat), it would cost the agricultural industry billions of dollars, perhaps tens of billions.