Great Lakes Fisheries and the Economy
Students participate in a role play investigating the economics value of fishing in the Great Lakes.
Curriculum Filter Results
How Do the Great Lakes Modify the Growing Season?
Using agricultural product and frost maps and an infrared satellite image, students develop a hypothesis about the effect of the lakes on growing seasons. They create a model to test it.
External Curriculum Materials
Who Can Harvest a Walleye?
The Great Lakes are an example of a natural community. In this community the small organisms (living things) outnumber the large organisms. The smaller organisms may be eaten by the larger ones.In this activity, students will count all the organisms of one kind, then count all the things they eat and all the things that eat them, creating pyramid of numbers that will also show who eats what.
Objectives:
When you have completed this investigation you should be able to:
- Apply the meaning of the following terms as they relate to a biomass pyramid: producer, herbivore, first-order carnivore, second-order carnivore.
- Calculate the relative number of kilograms at each level of the biomass pyramid in a given environment.
- Analyze how different conditions in the environment affect the pyramid
External Curriculum Materials
Great Lakes Waves and Water Safety Lesson
Students learn about how to analyze wind and wave data in the context of the famous historical wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, as well as a more recent storm in 2010. This lesson provides the opportunity for students to perform a retrospective investigation of the meteorological conditions that led to the shipwreck and explore how modern data sources could help prevent such a disaster. Additionally, students use weather maps to plan a “safe route” for a ship to navigate through the “North American Extratropical Cyclone of October 2010.” This lesson was prepared to support the educational mission of the Great Lakes Observing System.