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Discover how the GLOBE community is engaging in all things GLOBE through the community blog posts below.
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Please welcome Haley Wicklein from the NH Leitzel Center GLOBE Partnership as a guest blogger. Haley is very familiar with GLOBE through her work on the GLOBE Carbon Cycle project. She was an elementary school science specialist and has now returned to the University of New Hampshire!
There are new GLOBE Weather Stations at work at six schools in NH!
This fall, Jen Bourgeault and I traveled to schools across New Hampshire to help install GLOBE Weather Stations. With these stations, the students will monitor soil and air temperature, relative humidity, and rainfall as they ...
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Posted in:
GLOBE Science Topics:
GENERAL SCIENCE
SCIENTIST SKILLS
Investigation Areas:
PRECIPITATION
AIR TEMPERATURE
RELATIVE HUMIDITY
ATMOSPHERE
Primary Audience:
TEACHERS
Teacher's Guide:
SITE DEFINITION SHEET
In most scientific research an important test is whether the results of an experiment can be repeated, typically repeated by another lab and research group. A result that cannot be confirmed in this way is generally viewed as invalid. This is a great test for controlled experiments where virtually identical experimental conditions may be achieved.
In Earth science research involving observations of the natural world, experimental conditions cannot be reproduced. For environmental research the standard must switch for repeatable to intercomparable – capable of being compared. ...
Posted in:
GLOBE Science Topics:
GENERAL SCIENCE
EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE
BACKYARD SCIENCE
GLOBE PROTOCOLS
Investigation Areas:
HYDROSPHERE
PEDOSPHERE (SOIL)
ATMOSPHERE
BIOSPHERE
Primary Audience:
TRAINERS
TEACHERS
STUDENTS
SCIENTISTS
ALUMNI
Bird Beaks and What they Eat
Overview:
Students identify ideal beak shape for food.
Age:
Upper primary (4th and 5th graders) assisted 1st graders
Materials:
Bird beak/food handout
Straws
Dixie cups
Juice
Tweezers
Bowls
Wild grain rice
Slotted spoons
Cooked noodles (macaroni or similarly shaped)
Chopsticks
Gummy bears
White rice
Scissors
Marshmallows (jumbo)
Plan:
Ask students why birds have beaks and what they are used for - allow time for discussion. Read a book about beaks to the group. I used ...
Posted in:
Curriculum:
SCIENCE AND MATH
GLOBE Science Topics:
GENERAL SCIENCE
Learning Activities:
LAND COVER/BIOLOGY
Primary Audience:
TEACHERS
STUDENTS
Guest Blog by NASA SMAP Scientists Dr. Erika Podest and Dr. Narendra Das of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California USA.
SMAP scientists are using soil moisture in a number of ways, ways that allow all of us to better understand water’s role on Earth:
Weather Prediction : Water in the soil has the potential to evaporate (depending on atmospheric temperature and pressure) and when it does it plays a large role in cloud formation. Soil moisture also has a modulating effect on air temperature and humidity therefore having the ability to measure soil moisture ...
Posted in:
Field Campaigns:
SMAP
GLOBE Science Topics:
EARTH AS A SYSTEM
SCIENTIST SKILLS
EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE
GENERAL SCIENCE
GLOBE PROTOCOLS
Investigation Areas:
PEDOSPHERE (SOIL)
Primary Audience:
TRAINERS
TEACHERS
STUDENTS
PARTNERS
SCIENTISTS
ALUMNI
COUNTRY COORDINATORS
This week’s blog post comes to us from Dr. Janis Steele and Dr. Brooks McCutchen. Drs. Steele and McCutchen, along with their three sons, have been aboard Research Vessel Llyr since April 24, 2013. Read about their adventure in the Intertropical Convergence Zone here .
When people think of life in the seas, it is often the majestic that comes to mind, such aswhales, sharks, rays and coral reefs, or our own sustenance in the form of the fish that feed billions of us around the world. Rarely do we think of plankton, the tiny organisms found across the world's oceans. Plankton ...
Blog originally posted on The GLOBE Scientists' Blog: http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2013/06/26/north-america-and-hurricane-vulnerability-a-project-to-improve-forecasts/
The month of June brings with it hurricane season in the North Atlantic Ocean basin. Both countries in GLOBE’s North America Region, Canada and the United States, are affected by these storms. It is important to remember that tropical cyclones are named differently in various locations. In the Atlantic and east of the International Date Line in the North Pacific, they’re called hurricanes. In the ...
Posted in:
GLOBE Science Topics:
GENERAL SCIENCE
Blog originally posted on The GLOBE Scientists' Blog: http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2013/05/08/from-the-desk-of-a-globe-teacher-part-4-participating-in-a-globe-virtual-student-conference/
This week we have a guest blogger, Ms. Marcy Burns. Ms. Burns is a fifth grade teacher at Main Street Intermediate School in Norwalk, Ohio. As a participant of phase one of the Learning2Research Project, her students were able to submit a project and participate in the first virtual conference and she feels The GLOBE Program has been a great tool for engaging her students ...
Posted in:
GLOBE Science Topics:
GENERAL SCIENCE
Blog originally posted on The GLOBE Scientists' Blog: http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2013/03/06/connecting-pollutants-and-air-temperature-in-the-maldives/
With climate change, there are many relationships that are understood, and many others that are not. Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan from The Scripps Institute in San Diego has spent the last fifteen years in the Maldives, a nation south of India that is comprised of over 1,200 islands, studying the relationship between air pollutants, cloud formation and air temperature.
The Maldives are a great location for ...
Posted in:
Field Campaigns:
CARBON CYCLE
GLOBE Science Topics:
GENERAL SCIENCE
CLIMATE CHANGE
CLIMATE
Investigation Areas:
ATMOSPHERE
Blog originally posted on the GLOBE Scientists' Blog: http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2013/02/21/capturing-plant-green-up-through-your-lens/
This week we have a guest blogger, Jessica Taylor . Jessica has been active as a GLOBE observer and trainer since 2001 and is a Master Trainer at NASA Langley Research Center. She conducts regular GLOBE Teacher Workshops in the areas of atmosphere and phenology investigations and works with several NASA missions to integrate GLOBE activities into their educational outreach efforts.
Whenever I talk with teachers about studying ...
Posted in:
GLOBE Science Topics:
GENERAL SCIENCE
EARTH AS A SYSTEM
Investigation Areas:
GREEN-UP / GREEN-DOWN
Blog originally posted on The GLOBE Scientists' Blog: http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2013/02/13/globe-and-the-landsat-launch/
This week we have a guest blogger, Jennifer Bourgeault . Jennifer, a member of the GLOBE Land Cover/Biology Team for 10 years, is the North Country Education Services (NCES) New Hampshire GLOBE Partnership coordinator and Master Trainer in the Land Cover/Biology protocols. She thinks everyone should know how to use the Modified UNESCO Classification (MUC) Field Guide to classify land cover and how to use Multispec to look at change ...
Blog originally posted on the GLOBE Scientists' Blog: http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2013/01/23/trees-in-trouble-what-affect-does-tree-mortality-have-on-climate-change/
Through our trees in trouble series, we’ve examined trees in the Sahel zone in Africa and the United States . This problem, climate change and dying trees, has been seen on every continent, the only exception being Antarctica, due to the lack of vegetation on the frozen continent. Scientists have recently found that there is an alarming loss rate of big, old trees, whose ages range ...
Posted in:
GLOBE Science Topics:
GENERAL SCIENCE
CLIMATE CHANGE
CLIMATE
Investigation Areas:
ATMOSPHERE
BIOSPHERE
Blog originally posted on The GLOBE Scientists' Blog: http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2012/11/14/esno-basics-what-is-it/
Through many posts here on the Scientists’ Blog, we, in one way or another, discuss ENSO. ENSO, or El Niño-Southern Oscillation, is a quasi-periodic climate pattern that occurs in the tropical Pacific Ocean. When the conditions change, the atmosphere responds in many different ways. In certain locations, it is cloudier and it rains more, while in others it’s clear and dry. Through our “ENSO Basics” series, we’ll take a look at ENSO ...
Blog originally posted on the GLOBE Scientists' Blog: http://blog.globe.gov/sciblog/2012/10/19/supercomputing-and-climate-research-high-resolution-long-time-simulations-to-improve-our-understanding/
Have you ever watched a newscast and the on-air meteorologist mentions “according to our weather models, our best chances for rain will occur between the hours of 6 and 9 pm”? Have you wondered what exactly are those models they’re talking about?
A weather model is a series of equations that take a look at an initial state of the atmosphere (such as the temperature, ...
Posted in:
GLOBE Science Topics:
GENERAL SCIENCE
CLIMATE
Establishment and proliferation of invasive species in an environment where they were introduced is becoming a worldwide problem. During my trip to Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan in 2008 for a research fellowship, I was able to observe the same plant species that is also considered invasive in the United States. It is called the tree-of-heaven ( Ailanthus altissima ). This trip initiated a project involving a more in-depth investigation of the competitiveness of Ailanthus as an invasive plant. With the involvement of undergraduate students in the Department of Land Resources at ...
Posted in:
GLOBE Science Topics:
GENERAL SCIENCE
Investigation Areas:
EARTH AS A SYSTEM
This post is the second in a series called “Trees in Trouble”. To see the first post in this series click here .
Climate impacts so many things on this planet, most notably the types of flora and fauna that live in a specific region. And for those creatures that have annual cycles tied to the local climate, such as the hibernation of bears, migration of birds, and life cycles of insects, a change in climate can shift their way of life and even have subsequent consequences on the environment they live in.
Take the pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) for ...
Just over four years after my first visit to Australia (From drought to flood down under: Part I), the tides have turned and the country has gone from experiencing the driest decade on record to having the wettest two-year period on record in 2010-2011. These recent rains have been both a blessing and a curse. The good news is that they helped the region of southeastern Australia start to recover from the long drought (see Figure 1). The bad news is that the rains came on heavy and strong. In January 2011, devastating floods occurred across southeastern ...
In December 2007, I arrived in Australia for the first time ever. It was a critically dry period for the region, as they were in the midst of a terrible drought. Immediately upon my arrival, there were signals of a community in dire straits. Instead of advertisements for products and services, the signs in the airport were encouraging water conservation. My hotel bathroom had a message affixed to the mirror asking me to limit my shower time and water usage. The dams were drying up and many communities faced running out of water in just mere months. As ...
This week we have a guest blogger, Dr. Dixon Butler. Dr. Butler was the GLOBE Chief Scientist from 1996-2003 and now works as a consultant to NASA.
Students working on GLOBE Hydrology Protocols
The general explanation of the scientific method focuses on comparing two situations that differ in only one clearly defined way. One case serves as the control while the other is the experiment. The results must be replicable as a check that the measurements were made correctly and that any other differences between the control and experiment are insignificant. This is an ...
If you’ve seen the science news headlines in the past few weeks, you may have noticed stories summarizing how 2011 ranked in climate history. What is interesting is that the headlines have been a bit contradictory. For example, if you’ve read the story as reported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the headline reads “ NASA finds 2011 ninth-warmest year on record ”, which to me implies it was another record hot year given that it made the top ten list. Nonetheless, another story reported in ABS news touts that the world wasn’t quite ...
Last week’s GLOBE Scientists’ blog, “Peculiar weather – just because it sounds odd doesn’t mean it didn’t happen!” talked about inquiry-based learning. If you have a great question and decide to investigate further, how can you share your results? Sharing results is an essential part of the scientific method. If scientists didn’t share their work, how would we know what has already been done? Or what is already known? One of the best options for young scientists to share results is to participate in a science fair. Science fairs often occur in ...
Posted in:
GLOBE Science Topics:
GENERAL SCIENCE
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