FY06
Awardees of NOAA's Education Mini Grants
The NOAA
EdMG grant
program is an internally led NOAA funding mechanism with funds
distributed only to NOAA entities. A NOAA entity can be a line office,
a staff office, a program or a program component. NGOs,
other federal, state and tribal agencies can participate as partners,
receiving funds through the NOAA partner for contributions to an
EdMG-funded project. Either the PI or the Co-PI of the project must be
a NOAA federal employee.
For
FY06, $500,000 was
available for the EdMG program which was used to fund eight projects.
There was a ceiling of $100,000 and a floor of $10,000 for any one
project. The response received from the NOAA community was tremendous
with 138 proposal submitted over $7.6 M in requested funds. While this
was extremely encouraging, it did mean the competition was
very stiff and there were many worthwhile projects that we were not
able to support. We would like to thank all of those who submitted
proposals to the competition, it is wonderful to see how much interest
there is within NOAA for education. We look forward to working with the
eight successful applicants over the next year on some very exciting
projects.
FY06
NOAA Education
Mini-Grant Opportunity FY06 Request
for Applications:
[Word] [PDF]
For
information regarding specific awards please contact the Office of Education at OED.Website@noaa.gov.
|
Project Title
|
PI
|
Amount
|
Details
|
| Bridging
the Gap:
Assessing the Needs of Teachers to Enhance NOAA's Earth Systems Science
Education |
Atziri
Ibanez |
$100,000 |
Abstract
|
| Partnerships for
Ocean,
Coastal and Watershed Literacy — Building New Regional Coalitions |
Jonathan
Kramer |
$50,000 |
Abstact
Report
|
| NOAA Bridge Project |
Frances Larkin |
$70,000 |
Abstract
Report
|
| Professional
Development Workshops and Formal Evaluation of NOAA Educational
Materials |
Bruce
Moravchik |
$56,000 |
Abstract |
| NOAA Research
as a
Model of the Scientific Method: Teaching Teachers both Scientific
Process and Science Content |
Ashley
Steel |
$38,596 |
Abstract |
| Sea the Future
of
Science-NOAA
Mission
Integrated into the Classroom and Field |
Yonat
Swimmer |
$30,000 |
Abstract
Report
|
| Developing a
Framework
for Climate & Weather Education: Building from AAAS Project 2061's
Atlas of Climate & Weather Science Literacy |
Sidney
Thurston |
$62,270 |
Abstract
Report
|
| Reef
Missions-Exploring
Remote Underwater Habitats with Autonomous Vehicles |
Allen
Tom |
$99,982 |
Abstract |
Summaries
Title: Bridging the Gap:
Assessing the Needs of Teachers to Enhance NOAA's Earth Systems Science
Education
NOAA
Affiliation: National Estuarine Research Reserve
System, National Ocean Service
PI: Atziri Ibanez
Amount Awarded:
$100,000
Abstract: The
goal of this project is to increase the capacity of NOAA and the
National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS) educators to better
address teacher needs with enhanced education strategies, curricula and
materials. We will provide NERRS and NOAA partners with: (1) a national
baseline of K-12 teacher needs and preferences who use and possess some
knowledge of NOAA/NERRS content, programs and materials; and (2) tools
and training to enable educators to develop more effective strategies
to integrate NOAA sciences into the K-12 education realm.
Project
outcomes
include: 1) a
national needs assessment and summary report targeting K-12 science
teachers; and 2) a series of workshop presentations and a handbook
containing tools and recommendations to help NOAA educators design
educational programs and materials that will generate a broader impact
on K-12 audiences.
NOAA and NERRS must
ensure that all our education programs are correlated at a minimum to
National Science Education Standards (NSES). It is also NOAA’s duty to
encourage ocean and coastal science topics be included in standards.
Part of this task has already been accomplished with the creation of
Ocean Literacy: Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts, which
have been correlated to the NSES. We will research both how standards
can shape our programs, and how we can shape the standards in two ways.
First, our initial review will identify how estuary related topics and
skills are part of the NSES and in the fifty state standards. Second,
our needs assessment survey of teachers will gather information on
teachers’ perceptions of these connections, and on how the Ocean
Literacy principles, state-based standards and assessments support (or
discourage) use of NERRS activities, experiences and resources. Due to
the number of states involved, and because most state education
standards build on the national education standards, this project will
focus more closely on national science education standards.
The
process followed and the results of this project will be implemented
through the NERR System, and will serve as a model for other NOAA
educators who intend to start or scale-up education programs. The
project will provide specific data and analysis to inform the
continuing development of each Reserve’s K-12 education strategy and
serve as a national reference for the overall development of the NERRS
system-wide K-12 education program. It will contribute to long-term
quality improvements in NOAA education programming through professional
development opportunities for NERRS educators, resulting in more
relevant and useful product development at the local level.
[Back to Table]
Title: Partnerships for Ocean,
Coastal and Watershed Literacy — Building New Regional Coalitions
NOAA
Affiliation: SeaGrant
PI: Jonathan
Kramer
Amount Awarded:
$50,000
Abstract: Early
in 2006, a coalition of programs with the infrastructure, capacity and
a core mission to foster ocean, coastal and watershed literacy, formed
in Washington, D.C. Comprised of representatives of the Nation’s Sea
Grant Programs (through the Sea Grant Association: SGA), The Centers
for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE) and the Coastal America
Network of Coastal Ecosystem Learning Centers (CELC), the Coalition for
Ocean Literacy (Coalition) has emerged as a coordinating body dedicated
to sharing information and capacity, and building innovative
partnerships that link key federal agencies (NOAA, NSF, US Dept of the
Interior and others), university research and education (SGA and COSEE)
and the exceptional free choice learning venues found in the large
aquaria across the country.
Sponsored
by the NOAA
Office of Education and the U.S. EPA, the Conference on Ocean Literacy
(CoOL) will be held on June 7-8, 2006 and will be linked to activities
occurring during the 2006 National Oceans Week (NOW). CoOL will bring
together high level policy makers, scientists and educators in Washington, D.C
for two days of plenary sessions and interactive panels designed to
examine opportunities in the formal and informal learning arenas,
explore new avenues to engage underrepresented groups, and to develop
regional approaches to foster ocean literacy.
In
its role
to help
facilitate CoOL, the Coalition will utilize the Washington,
D.C. event as a hub for
a series of five regionally focused workshops — spokes
(Southern California, the Gulf of Mexico, Mid-Atlantic, Mississippi
River System, and the Great Lakes).
Each workshop will be conducted concurrently with CoOL and will link
the regional equivalents of the Coalition through a shared activity.
Regional activities will be planned and facilitated by a Sea Grant
Program or programs, a COSEE program and a CELC venue. In this way, new
and innovative partnerships will form, and will be sustained at the
regional level through support by the robust national infrastructure of
Sea Grant, COSEE and CELC.
A
central element in the five regional activities is a dynamic webcast
linking the Washington
speakers to the dispersed venues. The webcast will be available in real
time and in a delayed broadcast format to accommodate the needs of the
different venues. While regional venues will take advantage of content
emanating from the hub event, it will be incumbent on each of the
regional partners to develop the most appropriate set of linked
activities for their particular stakeholder base (i.e. to adapt their
webcasts to the needs of their regional audiences). Sea Grant’s central
role and the strong linkage to the NOAA Office of Education will ensure
that NOAA maintains a leadership position in this emerging national
effort. Funding received will establish a critical framework and
clearly articulated process for building a collaborative infrastructure
and gathering specific regional plans for the CoOL event. This project
will be facilitated by an administering Sea Grant Program (MD Sea
Grant.) CoOL will attract attention from key federal policy makers as
well as interest across broad media markets. The CoOL event has the
potential to bring ocean issues, and the need for expanded ocean
literacy, to the forefront in 2006. It will also have the added impact
of highlighting the Coalition as a national body and a strong,
coordinated NOAA presence in education.
[Back to Table]
Title: NOAA Bridge Project
NOAA
Affiliation: SeaGrant
PI: Francis Larkin
Amount Awarded: $70,000
Abstract: Improving
ocean science literacy of the
U.S.
citizenry across all
socio-economic levels has become mission critical for the federal
government, the ocean science and education communities, and
conservation organizations. The current deficiency in ocean science
knowledge is due in large part to lack of emphasis on the oceans in
K-12 core science curricula. The National Science Education Standards
and most state and regional standards do not directly address ocean
topics, and many science texts include little or no ocean-related
content.
NOAA
has developed an
extensive suite of ocean education products and resources, originating
in many different NOAA programs. This project proposes to apply a “one
NOAA” approach to identifying, organizing and disseminating those NOAA
web-based ocean education products that support NOAA’s mission goals,
the Ocean Literacy initiative, and best practices in science education.
To reach the broadest possible national audience, the collection will
be searchable from the Bridge website, from selected pages throughout
the NOAA network of websites, through NSF’s Digital Library for Earth
Systems Education (DLESE), and through the National Science Digital
Library (NSDL). The collection will be interactively searchable by
keyword, grade level, type of resource, NOAA Mission Goal relevance and
other criteria. The foundations and technology for this project are
already in place: 75 NOAA entities are represented on the Bridge, there
are links to more than 140 NOAA products, and 26 original Bridge DATA
Series lesson plans are built on NOAA data. Metadata describing these
resources have been migrated into a new XML-based (extensible markup
language) information system.
The
NOAA Bridge project
will: 1) improve visibility and dissemination of NOAA educational
materials through a collection managed by the Bridge; 2) review Bridge
holdings for NOAA materials locate and add new NOAA resources; and 3)
provide a search utility that can be installed on webpages external to
the Bridge, so that NOAA educational resources can be conveniently
searched from various NOAA websites.
[Back to Table]
Title: Professional
Development Workshops and Formal Evaluation of NOAA Educational
Materials
NOAA
Affiliation: National Ocean
Service
PI: Bruce
Moravchik
Amount Awarded:
$56,000
Abstract: For
two years, NOAA’s National Ocean Service (NOS) has produced and offered
Web-based formal educational products geared toward educators and
students at the high school level. They are comprised of tutorials,
case studies, and lesson plans based on NOAA research, and are
correlated to National Science Education Standards and the American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Benchmarks for
Science Literacy. These products have proved successful. In 2005, NOS’s
Discovery
Center
education Web site received nearly 3 million hits, and lesson plans
have been downloaded at an average rate of 8,000 every month. Also in
2005, NOS entered into a Cooperative Agreement with the National
Science Teachers Association (NSTA) to evaluate the content of its
educational products. All of the products received high marks for
age-appropriate, Web and inquiry-based materials.
Through
its partnership
with the NSTA, NOS has become acutely aware of teachers’ growing needs
for educational materials on ocean-science topics, as well as their
need to learn more about the topics themselves and how best to teach
them. NOAA has the opportunity to fulfill a specific and critical need
by reaching out to these educators, informing them of the availability
of NOAA educational materials, and providing them with professional
development to implement them in their classrooms. In addition, it is
essential for NOAA to create a formal mechanism by which its
educational materials may be evaluated by the educators and students
who use them. NOAA needs objective external feedback to assess the
effectiveness of its educational materials in improving the teaching of
state and national education standards, and to determine its success in
promoting the concepts and content of the major ocean literacy
principles.
The
project has two
primary goals. The first is to provide a series of three one-day
professional development opportunities whereby educators will learn
more about coastal and ocean science, and about the wide variety of
online tools and resources available to them via the NOAA Discovery Center
and Ocean Explorer Web sites. Educators participating in these
workshops will be shown how the mathematics, science, and technology
associated with coastal and ocean sciences can be effectively used in
their classrooms to help them meet state and national teacher standards
while fostering increased awareness, understanding, and appreciation of
the ocean world in their students. Each of the three professional
development workshops will be modeled on the day-long seminars
currently being conducted by the NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration.
Each workshop will be conducted at an aquarium and/or science center
that has established itself as an alliance partner with the NOAA Office
of Ocean Exploration. Workshops will be conducted in such a manner as
to provide the greatest possible geographic “spread”/dissemination of
NOAA educational resources amongst educators and students, with one
workshop taking place on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, and one
in the Gulf of Mexico region.
The
second major goal of this activity will be to develop and implement an
Outcomes-based Evaluation of the three educator professional
development workshops. The objective of the evaluation is to assess the
effectiveness of educational materials developed through NOAA in
improving the teaching of state and national standards, and promoting
the major principles of Ocean Literacy. Three outcomes will be
evaluated: 1) At least 90% of the educators participating in a NOAA
workshop will be able to describe how they plan to use at least one or
more of the NOAA curriculum units (e.g. lesson plans) to improve the
quality of their teaching; 2) At least 80% of the professionals trained
during 2006 deliver effective lesson plans to audiences; 3) At least
80% of the audience receiving the unit will report positive cognitive
and/or affective gains attributable to the unit.
[Back to Table]
Title: NOAA Research as a
Model of the Scientific Method: Teaching Teachers both Scientific
Process and Science Content
NOAA
Affiliation: National Marine Fisheries Service
PI: Ashley
Steel
Amount Awarded:
$36,596
Abstract: This project blends
innovative curriculum for teaching the scientific method and NOAA
research in a teacher development course through the University of Washington. The course will be a
3-credit evening course for pre-service and in-service teachers. The
course content will utilize The Truth About Science
curriculum to teach the process of scientific research and to provide
participants with experience conducting independent research projects.
Integrated presentations from NOAA scientists working on projects such
as weather monitoring, marine mammal research and ocean climate studies
will offer course participants an inside view of the process of
scientific research. Curriculum, video, and examples from NOAA’s
education website and project support will enable course participants
to bring their learning back to their classroom. The project links
secondary science teachers with scientists from diverse research groups
within NOAA and resources developed by NOAA’s education office while
meeting local and national education standards in science and
mathematics. By leveraging existing
resources, a small grant will be able to initiate a large collaborative
project with the potential to influence thousands of students and to
become an ongoing educational resource.
Local
and national
standards demand that teachers teach the process of scientific inquiry.
Many textbooks and websites are available for identifying and teaching
scientific content but few teach the process of asking a testable
question, creating reliable and unbiased methods for collecting data,
displaying and analyzing data, and communicating research results. Even
fewer link to real on-going scientific research. This proposal will
build the capacity of teachers to meet these expectations by providing
them with clear and proven curriculum for teaching the process of
scientific research combined with motivational and real examples from
ongoing NOAA research.
As
a part of this
proposal, we will also publish and incorporate a set of lessons that
integrate with The Truth About Science to teach
content about local watershed ecology and research currently being
conducted through the Watershed Program, NOAA Fisheries. They will also serve as models for course
participants on how to integrate content into lessons that teach the
scientific method, how to adapt existing content lessons to also teach
the process of scientific inquiry and research, and how to integrate
local examples into an existing curriculum. Lessons will be available
for distribution to non-course participants as well.
The
proposed professional development course revolves around three key
elements: NOAA research, The Truth About Science
curriculum, and existing but unpublished lessons on watershed ecology.
The P.I., Dr. Ashley Steel and Dr. Kathryn Kelsey have co-taught over
10 teacher workshops on inquiry-based science education. Feedback from
these teacher development workshops has been extremely positive.
Teachers report that the experience in designing, implementing, and
presenting their own mini research project changes the way they teach
science regardless of the curriculum that they are following.
[Back to Table]
Title: Sea the Future of
Science-NOAA Mission Integrated into the Classroom and Field
NOAA
Affiliation: National Marine Fisheries Service
PI: Yonat
Swimmer
Amount Awarded:
$30,000
Abstract: Sea the Future of Science (SFOS) is a collaborative
effort between Dr. Yonat Swimmer, NOAA fisheries biologist, Aquatic
Adventures, a non-profit informal science education organization based
in San Diego, California, Hoover High School, a low-income urban
school, scientists from University of Hawaii, University California
Davis, and several elementary and middle schools. The proposed project
integrates NOAA mandated science objectives into a unique educational
program that builds environmental literacy, promotes students of color
in the fields of environmental and ocean science, and engenders an
ethic of marine stewardship. SFOS will engage 18 low-income high school
students through direct participation in NOAA research, and greater
than 1,500 elementary and middle school students who will learn about
NOAA science through interactions with the high school students and
their educators.
Eighteen
students will
participate in a year-long program that incorporates classroom and lab
marine science instruction, field work alongside NOAA researchers and
their collaborators, and a continuum of support that includes
presentation of research findings and further career exploration.
SFOS will begin with
several weeks of study through an after-school and weekend program in
marine science and ecology to prepare students for the fieldwork to
come. The science curriculum will focus on
physical and chemical properties of the ocean, biota, and participation
in local research. Lab activities will include experiments,
dissections, microscope work, and specimen observation.
Guest lectures will include other NOAA scientists
including Dr. Jeffery Seminoff, at the Southwest
Fisheries Science Center,
an expert in sea turtle research, as well as other NOAA and Scripps
scientists who have expressed interest in providing marine science
outreach to San Diego’s
underserved communities. In addition, preparation will also
include a swimming course, parent/student meetings, and initial field
explorations. The NOAA PI (Y. Swimmer) will oversee lesson development
and facilitation of certain activities.
Five
weeks of fieldwork
will bring NOAA researchers, collaborating scientists, students and
educators to Bahía de los
Angeles, located approximately 400 miles south of the
Mexican-U.S. border on the eastern shore of the Baja California peninsula. Situated on the Sea of Cortez
and surrounded by islands and reefs, it is an ideal location for
scientific study of the marine environment. Students
will live and work within the community to conduct research. Many of
the students speak Spanish as a first language. These students’
linguistic strengths will be utilized to act as translators for
scientists, educators and other collaborators.
Working
alongside NOAA
staff and collaborating scientists, the students will conduct a series
of complimentary experiments from which we will gain a better
understanding of sea turtle behavior and biomechanics. At the Sea
Turtle Facility in Bahía de los Angeles, we will observe how
captive turtles approach, manipulate, and bite baited longline fishing
hooks. In the field, we will compare the
capture rates of turtles when using different colors of light sticks on
nets (as these are often used on longline fishing gear) and when using
shark silhouettes that in captivity have proven to act as effective
deterrents to sea turtles. In addition, bite force of captured turtles
will be measured to better understand how they may become hooked on
longlines. These data will be utilized by Mexican and U.S.
governmental agencies to affect the field of fisheries management and
to reduce sea turtle bycatch. All field work will be conducted with
proper permits both from U.S. and Mexican management
agencies. Paperwork is already underway to ensure acquisition of
approval prior to the commencement of work during summer 2006.
In
order to ensure lasting outcomes, a series of supports have been
developed to allow the students to continue on a path in the ocean
sciences. Upon return from the field experiences, the students will
present their research findings to over 300 community members in a
“Report to the Community”. Throughout the following year, each student
will present at a scientific conference. Students will participate in
job shadows, internships, a science seminar series, and additional
career exploration. Ideally, some of these job shadow experiences could
be conducted at NOAA facilities. Follow-up with students will continue
throughout their high school experience
[Back to Table]
Title: Developing a Framework
for Climate & Weather Education: Building from AAAS Project 2061's
Atlas of Climate & Weather Science Literacy
NOAA
Affiliation: Oceanic and Atmospheric Research
PI: Sidney
Thurston
Amount Awarded:
$62,270
Abstract: The Developing A Framework
For Climate & Weather Education Grant proposal will
fund the development of a workshop and framework aimed at building
climate and weather continuum literacy capacity and catalyzing
coordination and expansion of limited resources within federal agencies
and other organizations to support the cross-cutting priority of
environmental literacy focused on climate literacy and weather literacy.
The
scope of this FY 06
NOAA Education Mini Grant is to help the Climate goal and potentially
the Weather/Water goal answer two essential questions.
The first is a broad one that AAAS Project 2061 has
primarily answered through the development of a draft “Weather &
Climate” strand map, “What Climate Science Should Be Taught in a K-12
Earth Science Curriculum?” The AAAS Project 2061 team is currently
clarifying the research on what and when should certain science
literacy benchmarks relating to weather and climate be taught. The
second question is the larger of the two, how will we develop the
resources, phenomenon and representations to teach the climate and
weather benchmarks identified by AAAS?
This
proposal sets
forth the idea that key education agencies and organizations who have
weather and climate as part of their missions/focus should assemble in
a workshop setting. The goals of the workshop will be to: draft a set
of essential principles for weather and climate literacy (based on the
AAAS Project 2061 work); develop a unifying framework of how to create
lessons based on the new strand map; and inform the overall
climate/water literacy development process.
The
AAAS Project 2061
staff is committed to the development of the benchmark ideas, research
summaries and assessment items for the Earth science content area on
weather and climate for grade levels 6-8 and 9-12 by 2007. However,
AAAS will not have the funds to develop the phenomenon and
representations for all of these weather/climate benchmarks. As
educators and educational product developers, we will ultimately
develop a comprehensive collection of lessons that utilize the AAAS
research that apply best practices and instructional strategies
improving the quality of materials now available to teachers in this
ever growing critical area to our nations informed decision making
capabilities and resiliency.
In doing so,
we will
share our limited resources and mutually serve our missions needs and
those of the classroom teachers. Project
2061 has agreed to the workshop given that it takes place in the
January to April 2007 timeframe. After the workshop, participants will
be encourage to work collaboratively in a
inter-agency/inter-organization working group that will coordinate the
development of the best practice phenomenon and representations for all
the weather and climate benchmarks. The terms of reference for the
working group will be inclusive while participation will remain
voluntary.
[Back to Table]
Title: Reef Missions-Exploring
Remote Underwater Habitats with Autonomous Vehicles
NOAA
Affiliation: Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, National Ocean
Service
PI: Allen
Tom
Amount Awarded:
$99,982
Abstract: One of the challenges
for Hawaiian educators is obtaining materials and support for
incorporating Hawai‘i based examples of marine biology into Hawaii’s
science curriculum. This is particularly true for examples using the
Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI),
where a large percentage of Hawai‘i residents have no knowledge of the
NWHI or aren’t even aware of their existence. The facilities at the
Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) allows for a logistically
more feasible mechanism to fill this gap, bringing wonders of these
remote places of Hawai‘i directly to the student audience through
Kāne‘ohe Bay. In particular, the small geographic scale, fringing reef,
relative isolation, and abundance in marine life make Kāne‘ohe Bay a realistic proxy for places
like the NWHI. This is especially important as given the great distance
from the Main Hawaiian Islands (MHI), it is unlikely that students will
ever gain first hand access to, and hence an understanding and
appreciation of the protected areas of the NWHI. It is also
particularly opportune as the NWHI Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve is
poised to be designated as a National Marine Sanctuary, when public
awareness and support will become critical.
Emerging
technologies
using wireless communications and ocean engineering can bring otherwise
distant and inaccessible places like underwater reefs into the homes
and classrooms of the public, streaming real time experiences through
the world wide web that can be easily viewed by anyone with an internet
connection. While a powerful mechanism of increasing public awareness
through access to imagery, the value of these technologies can further
be enhanced by designing inquiry-based science lessons around remotely
acquired information for students in the science classroom.
One
method now being
used to explore the underwater realm is through data and video capture
by remotely operated water going crafts, also known as autonomous
underwater vehicles (AUVs). These are small untethered and battery
powered “submarines” equipped with various sensors and video capturing
devices that can collect data as it cruises along a prescribed path.
Sensors can be built in to the AUV to measure water quality parameters
such as temperature, pH, and salinity, as well as take still images and
short video. “Missions” can be designed that direct the vehicle to take
snapshots and sense water quality measurements at defined locales,
depths, or times, such as along a specified sampling transect.
Alternatively, vehicles can be remotely driven to sample randomly at
the user’s discretion. A variety of observations could be made that
could address species diversity, water quality and coral conditions
such as bleaching and disease prevalence, or distribution of alien
species .
The
data collected by
the autonomous vehicles can then be streamed back to land and
subsequently disseminated through the internet bringing the marine
world to the fingertips of any computer user. This is of particular
value for classroom science inquiry, where students can design studies
to test their own hypotheses. In the short term, data obtained from a
single AUV could be integrated into local classrooms for students to
begin virtual underwater sampling. In the longer term, a small fleet of
crafts can be used to explore other National Marine Sanctuaries of the
Pacific Region, including the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Fagatele
Bay National Marine Sanctuary in American Samoa, and the habitats of
the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary.
The
project will
develop habitat characterization and species diversity lessons that are
aligned to National and Hawaii State Science Content and Performance
standards utilizing the wealth of research expertise at HIMB and our
team of educators, encouraging students to develop hypothesis driven
questions on the following topics:
- Species composition: Because of the
similarities in reef communities between the MHI and NWHI, students can
develop an understanding of what the marine environment might look like
in the NWHI, comparing impacted to relatively pristine ecosystems.
- Coral disease,
bleaching and alien species prevalence: Students will get a
first hand look at coral health and understand the threats of bleaching
and invasive species to the world’s coral reefs. In addition, students
can measure coral health against environmental parameters such as water
temperature, making linkages to bleaching
and climate change effects on reefs.
- Water quality: The unique geography of
Kāne‘ohe Bay contributes to diverse
circulation patterns affecting water quality at different sites.
Students can design and test hypotheses on how proximity to the shore,
stream mouths, or nearby sewage overflow discharge sites correlate with
coral health and water quality. These measurements can also be related
to weather and storm events.
- Turtle observations: Students can design
questions on turtle biology, addressing characteristics such as
abundance, behavior, sex ratios and seasonality. The connection between
populations of this species in MHI and NWHI emphasizes that animals
living in far away places in the NWHI are interdependent on habitats in
the MHI.
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