What is the Ecological Role of an Estuary?
To most people, an estuary (es-chew-airy) is a place where fresh water meets the sea. In its broader meaning, an estuary is that part of the mouth of a stream in which the water level is influenced by the lake or sea into which the stream flows. The Great Lakes have some estuaries.
Old Woman Creek on Lake Erie has an estuary that has been set aside by the state and federal governments as a “state nature preserve” and “national estuarine research reserve.” The St. Louis River Estuary on Lake Superior is currently listed as an “Area of Concern”by the EPA and is undergoing remediation for pollution. Why should the government bother to preserve an estuary such as Old Woman Creek or the St. Louis River Estuary?
External Curriculum Materials
What Are the Characteristics of the Great Lakes Exotic Species?
This puzzle activity is designed to help students review facts and information about the characteristics of the Great Lakes exotic species. They also learn about origin and introduction methods.
Students will be able to match an exotic species with its characteristics, classification, origin, and introduction to the Great Lakes.
External Curriculum Materials
What are the Characteristics of Some Great Lakes Fish?
If you know how to construct a dichotomous key, you can make one that classifies real organisms, some fish in the Great Lakes. For this activity you will work in groups of 3 or 4. Your group will construct a key to identify some fish families and learn something about them.
Lake Erie has a larger variety of fish life than any other Great Lake. Scientists believer this is because of the southern position of the lake and because it is shallow. Lake Erie has 138 species of fish. These species can be grouped into 27 families. All of the fish in a given family share certain characteristics.In this exercise you will learn how to use these characteristics to identify the 27 families.
External Curriculum Materials
Revival for Survival
This game presents real-life choices involving exotic species found in the Great Lakes, such as zebra mussels and purple loosestrife. Students are to analyze a situation related to ecology and make an environmentally sound decision. After playing the game, students organize what they learned into a concept map.
Objectives:
- Analyze situations and factors affecting ecosystems.
- Recognize exotic species found in the Great Lakes.
- Create a concept map that interrelates the topics presented in the game
External Curriculum Materials
Wetland in a Pan
Students review a selection of career profiles and play a lively classroom game to find out more about marine and aquatic science professionals.
Objectives:
- Observe building a model wetland.
- Understand that wetlands are defined by plants, soil and water.
- Identify some wetland types and their location.
- Relate importance of wetland function to people’s needs and daily lives.
External Curriculum Materials
Seeing Purple: A Population Explosion
Through a simulation, sampling, and estimation activity, students learn about the impact of purple loosestrife on a wet land due to its exponential growth. They learn about purple loosestrife’s life cycle and appreciate how scientists determine population size in an ecosystem.
Objectives:
- Recognize purple loosestrife and tell how the seeds are dispersed.
- Describe that purple loosestrife produces over 2 million seeds and have a concept of how much that really is.
- Determine the population of purple loosestrife seeds for their wetland ecosystem through sampling.
External Curriculum Materials
Sea Connections
An ocean food web exploration.
External Curriculum Materials
Tangled Web
Students make a yarn web of connections between Great Lakes species, discuss significance of the complexity of the web and discover the impacts changes to the web.
External Curriculum Materials
Being Productive in the Arctic Ocean
Objectives:
- Students will be able to identify the three realms of the Arctic Ocean, and describe the relationships between these realms.
- Students will be able to identify major factors that limit primary productivity in the Arctic Ocean, and will be able to describe how these factors exert limiting effects.
- Given data on potentially limiting factors and primary productivity, students will be able to infer which factors are actually having a limiting effect.
External Curriculum Materials
Bats and Hot Nuts!
This activity allows students, working individually or in small groups, to retrieve information from pre-assigned web sites, retrieve real-time data to compare nitrate and phosphate concentrations at two open ocean monitoring sites, and construct an EXCEL graph using data from two different sites.
Each student or group will retrieve data for a specific time frame from public data generated at an ocean observatory and generate a graph for each variable. After graphing the data, students will analyze their graphs, discuss and compare their findings with the class. In conclusion, the students will predict how future Global Climate Changes might affect these nutrients in the open ocean.
External Curriculum Materials
