Everglades for Teachers
The Everglades project in this curriculum packet ask students to consider the following focus question: The year is 2010. The National Weather Service has studied the last decade's rainfall rates and the storm patterns over the Atlantic Ocean and has produced an alarming forecast: over the next 5 years, the Everglades region will experience a 30-percent decrease in the amount of rainfall it receives. How will your group respond to this serious decrease in rainfall? Create an action plan that will minimize the damage the long period of dry weather will cause to human and ecological interests.
To develop an answer to these complex questions, students will need to:
- understand the concept of a water budget,
- predict characteristics of the Everglades region in the future, including the size of the watershed, the population, the amount of rainfall,
- learn how soils reveal chemical changes in an environment over time, and
- explore the unique geology of the Everglades.
At the end of this project, students should produce a plan for meeting the region's water needs in light of the upcoming drought. Their plan should address how they think the drought will affect the environment, residents, and agribusiness. They should also provide justification for their plan, based upon the data they received in the Student Packet, their understanding of the water budget, and the lessons they learned through calculation and experimentation.
Opening Session
Help students look through the Student Packet. Ask them to read through the tables of data and, in small groups, write generalizations about the Everglades region on the basis of the data. (In this packet, the Everglades region is defined as Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach Counties.) Post these generalizations and discuss them as a class.
Return to these generalizations as students complete the three activities in the Teacher Packet.
