195 Geoscience Education VI: National and International Outreach in Geoscience Education

Tuesday, 11 October 2011
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Room 211AB

COMBINING CITIZEN SCIENCE WITH CURRICULUM AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT FOR CLIMATE CHANGE EDUCATION

Paper number: 195-10
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 3:45 PM – 4:00 PM

Authors

Abstract

Tracking Climate in Your Backyard is a collaborative informal education project between the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI), the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS), and New York State 4-H. The project aims to engage youth in real scientific inquiry through the collection, recording, and understanding of precipitation data using CoCoRaHS. CoCoRaHS is a citizen science based precipitation monitoring network, now present in all 50 states, that uses volunteers to record daily rain, snow, and hail data. As youth track weather scientifically through the CoCoRaHS project, they are guided through a curriculum that teaches aspects of weather and climate. The curriculum contains activities looking at weather and climate from a geological perspective, and emphasizes the potential of future climate change with examples of past climate change and a sound understanding of the relationships between aspects of climate. Some activities focus on paleoclimates, the use of proxy data (like tree rings), and the role of oceans as carbon sinks.

The curriculum also highlights extension activities that can be done in a community using CoCoRaHS data locally and nationally, measuring other aspects of weather over long periods of time, and using GPS technology to locate and study changes locally, within and between seasons (i.e. first bloom in different areas, leaf color change, river health spring through fall, and comparing these with historical data, etc.). 4-H educators disseminate the information to youth through summer camps, after school programs, and youth clubs. Because of the informal nature of these venues, groups can move forward with extension projects they find intriguing and present results from their projects at county and state fair venues. They can also repeat the experiments in the curriculum, changing variables, to see how changes affect the outcome of the experiment and discuss the results together, thereby experiencing the scientific process.