In the Air
This video simulation shows how the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide spreads across Earth in a single year. The carbon dioxide comes from both natural sources, like volcanoes, and human waste, such as the burning of fossil fuels, like coal.
As the animation shows, the United States, China and Europe [i.e., the countries of the European Union] are putting out the most plumes of carbon dioxide pollution. The animation covers a period of several months, showing how different seasons influence the amount of of CO2 in the atmosphere. Fifty percent of the CO2 stays in the atmosphere, while the other 50% is absorbed by the land and bodies of water.
In addition to carbon dioxide, when humans burn fossil fuels, they release other toxic or harmful chemicals, such as methane, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, lead, and mercury, into the atmosphere. The chemical methane is released into the atmosphere by agricultural activity, fracking, and other petroleum mining, as well as through the melting of the Earth’s permafrost layer — melting that is being driven by global warming.
Air pollution can travel long distances over a short time, but it can also linger in a community for long periods. The consequences of burning of fossil fuels, both past and present, in industrial settings like power generation plants or factories are an environmental problem that can remain for centuries. As you can see from the animation above, toxic emissions from fossil fuels are an inter-state and international problem. For example, smoke from a power plant in Ohio can pollute a body of water in Massachusetts with mercury, thus highlighting the important role of pollution regulation by federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and international treaties like the United Nations' Paris Climate Agreement.
In the Water
You are always in a watershed – an area of land where water flows downhill into a lake, stream, river, wetland, or the ocean. Pollution in rain and snow melt moves through watersheds - over and under the ground - depositing natural and human-produced pollutants into lakes, rivers, oceans, and our underground sources of drinking water.
Once pollution reaches the ocean, currents carry it around the globe. As in the case of air pollution, water pollution ends up in countries that had little to do with creating that pollution, and their citizens have to deal with the consequences.
One such incident took place in the Merrimack Valley. In March of 2011, the Hooksett, New Hampshire sewage treatment plant overflowed during a storm, dumping untreated water and millions of tiny plastic discs, used to filter sewage, into the Merrimack River. Five days later, the discs arrived on the beaches of Newburyport, MA. Ten years later, the discs are now showing up on the beaches of European countries. A community-science effort is recording data about where the discs travel via ocean current.
Crumpled Paper Watershed - Investigate the physical characteristics of a watershed and the effects of human land-use decisions on the watershed (activity):
https://www.uml.edu/docs/crumpled_paper_complete_tcm18-175871.pdf
Metaphor for a Watershed - Use your own hands to create a watershed (activity): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IlNbYc4M0RuN35ow5useWih_PC0CsEKmaa-9eLDMJNU/edit?usp=sharing
What is a Watershed? (powerpoint): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wXuYqQjtCttVGmMq3eKN9RRSfZ3qulLF/view?usp=share_link
What is a Watershed? (worksheet): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GR7n9ZyKFbj9ov0n1Qh2CSaz7vJeDBEc/view?usp=share_link
The Great Rubber Ducky Journey - Read the epic saga of world traveling rubber duckies that began in 1992 and continues today (reading): https://medium.com/knowledge-stew/the-great-rubber-ducky-journey-d9b0977a8249