Climate Research

Overall Introduction Objectives:

Students will:

• • Describe some of the research that is occurring in regards to global climate change

  • Be able to list some animals that depend on mangrove and/or salt marsh habitats

  • Understand how wetlands and salt marshes potentially need to migrate and adapt in response to sea level rise

  • Be able to measure elevation

Overall Activity Information:

• • Prep Discussion (below) (Grade: 5+; Time: 30 min)

  • Prep Exercise 1 (Grade: 5th+; Time: 45 min) - Migrating Mangroves and Marshes (recommended extension - use iNaturalist.org or EOL.org for resources to find additional locally relevant estuarine animals)

  • Activity 1 (Grade: 7th+; Time: 60 min) - Mock marsh transects 

  • Activity 2 (Grade: 5th+; Time: 60 min) - Beach Biosphere

  • Additional site-based activities for San Francisco Bay area

    • Olympia Oyster Restoration and Conservation - This is an outdoor activity that takes prep in the classroom in order to make students knowledgeable about the sampling techniques and the underlying parameters that affect oyster survival and location. Review the executive summary of "A Guide to Olympia Oyster Restoration and Conservation". Utilize the "Do-it-yourself" Site Evaluation Tool at a location nearby the school.

    • Oysters and Climate - Field-based activity at the San Francisco Bay NERR. Contact Sarah Ferner at daviess@sfsu.edu for additional information.

Overall Vocabulary:

• • Accretion (deposition) - a slow addition to land by deposition of water-borne sediment; an increase of land along the shores of a body of water

  • Elevation - Height on the earth's surface above sea level

  • Erosion - act in which earth is worn away, often by water, wind, or ice

• Estuary - a partially enclosed body of water (such as bays, lagoons, sounds or sloughs) where two different bodies of water meet and mix

  • Natural products for our economy - We use a wealth of natural products from wetlands, including fish and shellfish, blueberries, cranberries, timber, and wild rice, as well as medicines that are derived from wetland soils and plants. Many of the nation's fishing and shellfishing industries harvest wetland-dependent species.

  • Salt Marsh - are coastal wetlands that are flooded and drained by salt water brought in by the tides

  • Wetlands - are lands where saturation with water is the dominant factor determining the nature of soil development and the types of plant and animal communities living in the soil and on its surface

Guiding questions for this section:

• 1. What research is currently being done regarding global climate change?

  2. What are the effects of global climate change?

Prep Discussion

Review the different evidence indicating global climate change is occurring (click here for a list with explanation of each piece of evidence). Then watch the video below using the following guiding questions. (click here in case you can't access YouTube or if you don't want any ads to pop up)

• 1. What do we currently know about sea level rise?

  2. What do we currently know about wetlands (with regards to sea level rise) that's happened over the past millennia?

  3. What are four services that coastal wetlands provide to humans that could be lost if plants die off due to sea level rise?

  4. What do we currently not know regarding wetlands and sea level rise?

  5. What are we trying to do to better understand it?

  6. How much accretion (deposition) and/or uplifting of the wetlands should be currently taking place to keep up with sea level rise?