How Will Climate Change Affect Health in the Bay Area?

1. How Will Climate Change Affect Health in the Bay Area? Joanne Abramson (Royal Sunset High School, SLZUSD), Lauren Bishop (Butler Academic Center, ACOE) • Scientific Investigation in 2 Phases • What is the atmosphere composed of? • How is the composition of the atmosphere changing over time? • What are greenhouse gases? • What is the electromagnetic spectrum and how is it involved in global climate change? • The second phase of the project involves student groups exploring health issues that are increasing with global warming: • Why is this problem related to global warming? • Who is affected and how can they help themselves? • How is this condition affecting the human body? • What can they do to decrease the contributing factors? • Probable Health Impacts to the Bay Area • Key Lessons and Activities • Engagement • Imagery from NASA and a video about global warming effects on California from KQED • Online carbon cycle game and inquiries using prisms and hands on modeled atmospheres • Brainstorms on potential health issues and the cause and effect processes that lead to the health problems in the Bay Area • Exploration • Greenhouse Effect in a Jar lab to explore conditions that lead to increases in temperature • Graphs of a variety of atmospheric gases over time • Research on the cause, epidemiology and treatments for disorders already exacerbated by global warming. • Explanation • Vocabulary introduced with animated or realia visuals, crossword and graphic organizers • Laboratory exercises on greenhouse gases and the electromagnetic spectrum • Note taking strategies applied to on line articles that explain the causes and effects of health issues. • Elaboration • Student groups will demonstrate their topic with an experiment to be shared. • Students will brainstorm the connections between the health topics. • Research-Based Instructional Strategies • Interactive journals • Anticipation guides for each lecture • Note taking strategies • Graphic organizers and sentence stems. • Capstone Project/Investigation and Assessments • The summative assessment of student groups will be a rubric based on their written, oral and visual products. The written product is an individual essay on their topic including the causes, potential remediation on a personal and global level, and interrelation to other health topics. The visual element is a group poster with pictorial, graphic and written components. The 21st century skills are assessed with an oral presentation of the poster and a demonstration pertaining to their topic. • Implementation Plan and Next Steps • We need to work out a reliable version of the greenhouse gas lab that does not use glassware to accommodate unique security requirements. • Group demonstrations need additional development. • Resources • Graphs of Change (NASA) • http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/ • Earth Observatory Global Maps • http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/ • The Greenhouse Effect (plus diagram) • http://climate.nasa.gov/causes/ • Electromagnetic Spectrum • http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/waves3.html • Greenhouse Effect Animation • http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/earthguide/diagrams/greenhouse/ • KQED Quest: CA at the Tipping Point • http://www.kqed.org/quest/television/climate-watch-california-at-the-tipping-point-part-one • Playing with Prisms Mini-lab (Adapted from http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/optics/activities/students/prisms.html) • Carbon Cycle Game http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/climate/carbon_cycle.html • The Very, Very Simple Climate Model http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/climate/cli_model.html Essential Question/Problem Global warming is changing our climate resulting in a variety of alterations to atmospheric, plant and animal cycles. What impacts to the health of people in the Bay Area can be anticipated as a result of these changes? The first phase focuses on the physical and environmental factors that lead to global warming including: Smog in Oakland • Learning Objectives (Science Standards) • Grade 9-12: Life Science • 6b. Students analyze and describe changes in an ecosystem resulting from changes in climate and human activity. • Grade 9-12: Earth Sciences • 4c. Students describe how the electromagnetic spectrum reaches the Earth and how it is reflected back. Additionally, students classify atmospheric gases with respect to their absorption of infrared radiation and analyze how this causes the greenhouse effect. • 8a. Students graph the composition of the atmosphere, including the greenhouse gasses. • Grade 9-12: Physical Science • 3a. Students know heat flow and work are two forms of energy transfer between systems. • Grade 9-10: ELA (Reading) • 2.4. Students synthesize content from several sources, paraphrase ideas and connect them to other sources. • 2.5. Students extend ideas in secondary sources through analysis, evaluation and elaboration. • Integrated Health Standards • 21st Century Skills • Communication and collaboration • Forming logical explanations • Problem solving • Data analysis • Health and information literacy Increase in intensity and scope of mosquito vectored disease Increase in natural disasters which may affect air quality • Evaluation • Daily quick write prompts geared at assessing both content comprehension and academic language acquisition • Summative quiz game • Production of complex graphs • Checklist of communication and collaboration skills Possibly fatal responses to heat waves, especially in urban areas Increase in production of smog and ozone, changes in pollen levels and/or fungal pathogens leading to respiratory problems Photo Credits www.sfgate.com www.saidaonline.com blog.altuse.com/2010_04_01_archive.html www.jumpthecurve.net/.../ www.urbanheatislands.com healthguide.howstuffworks.com www.impactlab.com/?tag=rain Malnutrition due to rising food costs and declining availability