Wetland Flood Absoprtion Demo?

You may recall this factoid from our wetlands discussion: One acre of wetland can absorb up to 1.5 million gallons of flood water. After a few back-of-the-napkin calculations, I estimate that that 1.5 million gallons over an acre works out to be a water depth of about 1.4 m (4.5 ft.). Not bad! My question is this: is there anyway we could demonstrate this in (or out of) the classroom? It'd make for a really impressive demo if we could. Thoughts? Ideas?

VT Watershed Science, Education and Leadership: Stormwater Engineering & Management

Here are the links I was talking about in response to Nancy's post about Stormwater Management...

http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/EnvironmentalServices/epo/PDFfiles/OneRoof.pdf
http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/EnvironmentalServices/epo/EnvironmentalServicesEpoRainBarrel.aspx
http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/EnvironmentalServices/epo/EnvironmentalServicesEpoRainGarden.aspx

Doing the research for the stream restoration project, Donna and I found the process to be much more detailed than we originally thought. We hope our powerpoint and guidelines will be helpful for those interested in either doing their own stream restoration project in their neighborhood, or in integrating a stream restoration project into their curriculum.

As you will remember from my lovely back yard as witnessed at the cookout following the 'field trip' to Lake Accotink, small steps by homeowners can make a big difference in the health of an urban stream. The Park Service recommends that homeowners whose yards contain or abutt a stream rake leaves to the stream bank rather than bagging them, and pile any sticks shed from trees in said leaf piles. This provides a place for amphibians and snakes (augh!) to hybernate, and keeps the material out of our landfills. Plus it is much easier to rake stuff downhill than constantly stopping to bag.

We enjoyed our walks in the woods with all, and hope that we can keep in touch with both our cohort and you newbies!

Sincerely,
Donna and Nancy

GREEN program

This Earth Force thing seems pretty cool and I would encourage you guys to check it out (especially you middle school teachers). The process seems relatively simple and would be a very personal activity for students as it would be looking in their own back yards. Arlington Public Schools has had some good success with it and HB Woodlawn won a Presidential award last year!

Watershed Education

I hope everybody got a chance to peruse the weblinks Matt and I put on our watershed education presentation. I know most of us (all of us?) do not directly deal with environmental science but there are plenty of opportunities for staff development (licensure points) during the summer months plus other small projects that would be useful after SOLs or even on those days we need a break from our normal routine. Since we're all almost done with our degrees (hopefully) it's an opportunity to branch out and become involved in something new and different. One of the links is to environment grants available to teachers and schools. This could be an untapped resource and a way to get money for your classes or for the environmental club at your school.

Thanks

Thanks for hearing me out and providing some feedback on my thoughts on collaborative wikis. It was good to get some other views, as my ideas can get pie-in-the-sky without lots of data.

Hope GalAXy hut was fun!

Stream Corridor

Donna and Nancy, both of you did great job in your presentation. Though I was not physically present at the site but viewing your powerpoint provides me with crystal clear ideas about stream corridor.

You two are very informative . Excellent resource for AP Bio./ IB Bio. and Environmental courses.
Keep up the good work!

Anjuman

Having hard time to post

Hello Everyone,
I will miss all the fun stuff today in the watershed class. See you all in the next class. Enjoy your meeting at Zachary Taylor Run Park. I went to Donaldson Run on Saturday, June 28. I really enjoyed the day at Donaldson Run with my family.

Stormwater Engineering & Management

At class last week I spoke about stormwater engineering and management in Arlington. I hope I was able to keep your interest... even though the dog park was right behind us and those dogs were so cute! Jim had mentioned that he collects storm water in holding tanks and also told of about a few buildings in Arlington that collect stormwater in large tanks and wait until the stormwater has cooled down before releasing it, so that the temperature of nearby streams do not increase.I know on my parents collect stormwater in barrels and use it to water their garden later.

If you have ever seen pictures of houses in Bermuda, nearly every house has a white roof made of limestone and the roof also has many layers that look like steps. The limestone acts as an anti-bacterial agent when rainwater hits the roof and trickles into large holding tanks. The step-like layers create a larger surface area for the rainwater to touch, acting like a large filter. All the filtered rainwater collected is used by the household to wash, drink and cook with, as this is the island's only source of freshwater.

Does anyone in class collect stormwater to use later? If you are not currently collecting stormwater have you thought about it since the stormwater presentation or have you heard of other ways to utilize stormwater?

Watershed evaluation/monitoring

I introduced watershed evaluation and monitoring a few weeks ago. The different parts of my presentation are bulleted below:

• Clean Water Act.
• Monitoring techniques and equipment.
• Physical characteristics and water chemistry.
• Benthic organisms.
• Riparian Buffers.
• Sediment.
• Nutrients.
• Exotic and Invasive Species.
• Litter/trash

Do you use any of the above in your lessons (even if the Chesapeake Bay Watershed is not in your curriculum)? Where does it fit into your curriculum?

Class on May 28, 2008

I know it's been a couple of weeks since we had the chance to look at Four Mile Run through Benjamin Banneker Park, but I wanted to present some ideas from that day to think about. First of all, I hope everyone had fun using orienteering skills to find the Gummy Bears (I know I did). Some thoughts from that day and other activities: how does the environment in which your Gummy Bears were located affect the microwatershed? How does this affect the Potomac watershed as a whole? How do you think the quality of life/organisms that we found in Four Mile Run are related to the microwatershed environment in Benjamin Banneker Park?

See you all in class on Wednesday.

--Pepper

Introductions, Watershed Identification and Mapping

Share your first impressions of how you might use the resources and experiences provided in this course to develop a watershed-related lesson or unit for the courses you teach, or in a related volunteer role.