Chattermarks

~ Photo by Jeremy Magee.

Last week the first climate change teacher workshop was held at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center. Twenty science teachers from Oregon and Washington were invited to spend a week at NCI’s Diablo Lake campus and discuss ideas and challenges for integrating climate change into curriculum and lessons. In an attempt to make direct connections between climate change and home communities, the workshop focused on regional evidence and effects of climate change in the Pacific Northwest.

Glaciers on a beach with Ian. ~  Photo by J. Magee.

Interpretive ranger Andrew Pringle welcomed us to the park and gave us an overview of the area. Racing the rising winds, we quickly jumped into the big canoes and went out on the lake with aquatic ecologist Ashley Rawhouser to gather data and zooplankton samples. Back in the classroom, Ashley explained how these fit into a lake system and what trends to pay attention to over the years.

Andrew and Ashley lowering the data logger. ~  Photo by Jack McLeod.

Collecting zooplankton and water temperature data. ~ Photo by J. McLeod.

Keying out zooplankton. ~ Photo by J. McLeod.

During the the next year, each teacher will undertake a service learning project with their students to connect lessons on climate change with actions that address it. They will be connecting their lessons to the National Park system in some way, and many of them are hoping to use the data that Ashley and other scientists have collected in the park.

Ashley laying out the ecology of the Skagit River. ~ Photo by D. Masterman.

The next day found us out on Railroad Grade with geologist Jon Riedel. Jon shared his work with glaciers over the past decade and fielded questions on a range of climate topics.

Jon shows old photos of the Easton glacier and its position. ~ Photo by J. McLeod.

Perusing glacier data sets in the field. ~  Photo by J. McLeod.

Mr. Magee enjoys the ride home. ~ Photo by J. McLeod.

Back in the classroom, teachers traded ideas on lesson plans, creative ways around barriers and shared their service project ideas. We created an online site for sharing documents and ideas and will be sharing our projects with other teachers nationwide with the launch of the Parks Climate Challenge website.

Andrew talks about interpreting climate change. ~ Photo by D. Masterman.

This program was started by an initial grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and further developed with funds from the National Park Foundation as part of a larger initiative called the Parks Climate Challenge.

A big thank you to our supporters and to all the teachers who took time out of their summer to participate in the workshop!

Sixteen high school students hailing from Oregon and Washington arrived in the North Cascades on June 26th to begin an unforgettable adventure. These young leaders came to participate in the third year of Cascades Climate Challenge, one of North Cascades Institute’s youth programs. The youth started off by splitting into two groups to go on 12-day backpacking and canoeing trips on and around Ross Lake. For many, this was the longest time away from home, the first time paddling a canoe, and the most physically challenging experience they have had.

CCC2 stands on a bridge over rushing Lightning Creek

CCC1 canoers “raft up” in the mouth of Devil’s Creek

Students learned many new skills each day, in addition to lessons about climate change, invasive species, presenting and naturalizing. Everyone took turns cooking meals, cleaning up following Leave No Trace guidelines, building fires, and leading the group. Spending so much time in North Cascades National Park (NCNP) provided a great opportunity for hands-on service work, and a chance for the students to give back to the park they were learning and living in. Mike Brondi, volunteer coordinator for NCNP, met up with both groups to teach them about invasive reed canary grass, which the students pulled in order to promote native grass growth. They also planted native seeds to restore the banks of Dry Creek and cleared the trail between Hozomeen and Willow Lakes.

Members of CCC1 manage to fit six people in a bear box

Students took turns cleaning up after each meal

Each group’s 12-day trip included waking up at 5am one morning to climb up Desolation Peak, gaining breathtaking views of snow and glacier-capped mountains, at the expense of one thousand vertical feet per mile. Youth who had been strangers on the first day supported each other like family, encouraging one another to the top of the mountain. This was just one of innumerable moments of awe and inspiration on the trips: listening to eerie loon calls at Hozomeen Lake, paddling silently to the mouth of Devil’s Creek, or holding 20,000 year old pieces of wood flattened by glaciers, preserved in clay next to the Skagit River.

Canoes float below Desolation Peak, about to paddle their hikers to the Desolation trailhead

CCC2 poses in triumph, with Jack Mountain and Ross Lake as a backdrop

After the two smaller groups completed their “backcountry” trips, they reunited at the Learning Center for the luxuries of “front country” camping, and ten days of focusing more intently on the science of climate change and its impacts on the North Cascades. Students met with specialists like NCNP geologist, Jon Riedel, to learn how climate change is affecting the park’s glaciers, Gina DiCiccio, NCNP climate change intern, and Katie Fleming from the Cool School Challenge. Their lessons allowed students to explore a variety of ecosystems, including Baker Lake, Baker River, Thunder Knob, Rainy Lake and Diablo Dam powerhouse.

By the end of the trip, students were experts at tent construction

Students hiked the still-snowy trail to breathtaking Rainy Lake for lessons about glacial landforms

After some rainy nights camping at Newhalem campground, resulting in the overnight formation of tent lakes, the group returned to the Learning Center for their culminating project: putting together an hour-long presentation and lessons on their experience, what they learned and how the students will be applying their new knowledge when they return home. The students shared this with the Kinship Conservation Fellows, a group of eighteen international leaders who are actively working to integrate a practice of conservation and environmental awareness into business. The students in turn got to learn about some of the kinds of jobs they could pursue to help preserve the environment they are so passionate about.

A student snorkels in Ross Lake, looking for small red-sided shiner fish

Twenty-two days after these sixteen students first came to the Cascades, they had to find a way to say goodbye to both a place and a community that had become a home and a family. As instructors, we hope that the students left with as much inspiration and confidence as they gave us. Getting to teach, lead, and mentor such exceptional young adults is a privilege. Spending three full weeks 24/7 watching these youth grow individually and as a group is a process that, while exhausting, is simultaneously one of the most rewarding experiences an educator can have. These bright-eyed and enthusiastic youth remind me of myself at a younger age, which gives me hope that they will continue becoming leaders that will not settle for “business as usual” and a planet that cannot support the systems and amazing organisms we cherish. NCNP maintenance foreman Gerry Cook shared the following words with the members of Cascades Climate Challenge, which they have all taken to heart: “I cannot change the world, but I can change the world around me. And if we change the world around us, we will change the world.”

On July 23^rd, a group of volunteer scientists joined biologists from the North Cascades Institute, North Cascades National Park and Western Washington University to say farewell to “the winter that would never end” by kicking off the Cascades Butterfly Project.

The Cascades Butterfly Project is a collaborative effort between biologists and citizen scientists, who will work together to monitor butterfly populations throughout North Cascades National Park, Mount Rainier National Park, and Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. 
After a brief classroom session where we reviewed the basics of butterfly ecology and identification, we headed to Sauk Mountain to test our new skills and learn the field study techniques we’ll use to gather this important data.

Satyr Comma perched on the thumb of photographer, graduate student, and volunteer wildlife biologist, Elise Ehrheart.

Mountain ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to climate change, with alpine meadows expected to shrink dramatically throughout the Cascades Mountain Range. Butterflies make ideal indicator species of alpine ecosystem health because they are particularly sensitive to climatic changes, and are relatively easy to identify in the field by scientists and volunteers alike.

Hiking home after a successful day in the field

If you’re interested in joining in on this exciting (and fun!) research, it’s not too late, and no previous scientific experience is necessary.  There will be another volunteer training at Mount Rainier National Park on August 13. For more information, contact North Cascades Institute’s Science Coordinator, Jeff Anderson, at jeff_anderson@ncascades.org or (206) 526-2574.

I recently had the opportunity to join Megan McGinty, North Cascades Institutes’ Climate Challenge Program Coordinator, in Great Smoky Mountains National Park for a meeting with representatives from several other environmental learning centers that will all be offering trainings this summer on how to teach climate change in the classroom. The meeting was hosted by Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, which is located near Cades Cove in the national park. The meeting included representatives from NatureBridge’s Headlands Institute (Golden Gate Natural Recreation Area) and Santa Monica Mountains Institute (Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area), as well as from Will Steger Foundation/Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, all of which will be leading teacher trainings over the summer.

The trainings are being sponsored and supported by the National Park Foundation’s Parks Climate Challenge program. In addition to the meeting being a great opportunity for me to learn more about the trainings that will assist roughly 120 teachers in effectively teaching their students about climate change in the context of our national parks, I was also able to learn more about the different national park-based environmental education organizations and how they share their natural resources with students.   While at Tremont, we had the opportunity to observe students participating in their school program, as well as participate in a citizen-science phenology plot activity, studying where different plants are in their seasonal life-cycle.

» Continue reading Spring in the Smokies

Note: Kathleen Dean Moore will present her new book Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril at Village Books in Bellingham on Wed, February 9, at 7 pm; free!

Because of humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels, we are warming our earth beneath a cloak of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

Here in Washington State, rising temperatures and a warmer climate are causing our glaciers to melt faster than they can replenish themselves. This is leading us towards a future with less fresh water for agriculture and drinking and less resources for inexpensive hydroelectric generation. Over 40 of our coastal communities are threatened by rising sea levels. Sagebrush-steppe and alpine ecosystems may disappear as the tree line shifts, and growing seasons will change in unpredictable ways. The loss of several amphibian species, alterations in bird and butterfly migratory patterns and invasions of unchecked, voracious insect infestations are already underway. Ocean acidification is choking the abundant life in Puget Sound and bays of the outer coast. Eastside forests are drying up and wildland fires will become more prevalent. We humans will face a deadly spike in infectious, respiratory and heat-related illnesses as the natural world around us smolders.

Heard this laundry list of doom before? Most likely you have, and it’s because scientists have done an impressive job of both studying the phenomenon of global climate change and communicating the causes and effects to the public. The effort has be so heroic that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”

While the data, interpretations and subsequent warnings from the scientific community are essential pieces of this puzzle, Kathleen Dean Moore, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State University, recognized that something was missing. Moore, the author of personal essay/nature writing books like Riverwalking, Holdfast and Wild Comfort, teaches environmental ethics and moral reasoning to students and she soon realized that the scientists’ arguments, no matter how comprehensive, were not going to inspire us to act to save our world.

“Clearly, information is not enough,” she writes. “A piece is largely missing from the public discourse about climate change: namely an affirmation of our moral responsibilities in the world that the scientists describe. No amount of factual information will tell us what we ought to do. For that, we need moral convictions… Facts and moral convictions together can help us understand what we ought to do – something neither can do alone.”

In the new volume Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril, co-edited by Michael P. Nelson for Trinity University Press, Moore assembles eighty of the world’s leading visionaries, leaders and writers to create a compelling call to action to confront the challenges of climate change based on moral and ethical grounds. Moore and Nelson have orchestrated a chorus featuring the sterling voices of the Dalai Lama, Barack Obama, Desmond Tutu, John Paul II, Barbara Kingsolver, Paul Hawken, Thich Naht Hanh, E.O. Wilson, Wendell Berry, Bill McKibben, Terry Tempest Williams, Gary Snyder, bell hooks and many, many others from cultures and countries around the planet.

“Do we have a moral oblication to take action to protect the future of a planet in peril?” the editors asked of their contributors, “and if so, why?”

The answers – inspiring, creative, sobering and grounded in reason – are presented in thematic clusters, including “Yes, for the survival of humankind,” “Yes, to honor our duties of gratitude and reciprocity, “Yes, for the stewardship of God’s creation, “Yes, because justice demands it,” “Yes, because the world is beautiful.”

Moral Ground strives to start the conversation about “who we are when we are at out best, what we must do to be worthy of our gifts” and how we might live on Earth “respectfully, responsibly and joyously.” These are essential questions to ponder here at the most crucial turning point our planet has ever faced.

What: A free Electronic Field Trip to North Cascades National Park to explore climate change and its effects on people and ecosystems

Who: Students 4th through 8th grade

When: October 13, 2010, 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. PDT

How: Register for free at http://www.northcascadeseft.com

North Cascades Institute, North Cascades National Park and the National Park Foundation invite schools across the country to take a free Electronic Field Trip (EFT) to North Cascades National Park on October 13, 2010. The EFT will be hosted by popular television personality and passionate conservationist Jeff Corwin. Classes can watch the broadcast as it is streamed over the internet or broadcast on participating public television stations and internal school satellite networks. Lesson plans for teachers and web-based games for students are available now at http://www.northcascadeseft.com.

The Electronic Field Trip, “Climate Challenge: North Cascades National Park,” will include two live, hour-long broadcasts (7:00 a.m. PDT and 10:00 p.m. PDT) from North Cascades National Park featuring park rangers, scientists, kids and spectacular scenery. The free program is designed for 4th through 8th grade students and it will be the first in a series of investigative EFTs to explore the impact climate change is having on our national parks and encourage students to become leaders in addressing climate change. Students will have the opportunity to call in and have their questions answered during the broadcast.

“National parks are fun places, and they make great classrooms,” said Chip Jenkins, North Cascades National Park Superintendent. “You can learn about the foundations of democracy at Independence National Historical Park, about the struggle to preserve the nation at Gettysburg National Military Park, about geological forces that shape the earth at Grand Canyon National Park, and you can learn about the effect of climate change on people and ecosystems through this Electronic Field Trip to North Cascades National Park.”

Teachers and students are encouraged to visit http://www.northcascadeseft.com now to access lesson plans and web-based games to get a jump start on their interactive adventure to North Cascades National Park.

According to a recent study released by the Environmental Protection Agency that followed trends relative to sea level rise along U.S. Coasts between 1958 and 2008, climate change is expected to affect virtually every sector of society, including water resources, energy use, food production, commerce and recreation. Using North Cascades National Park as a backdrop, this Electronic Field Trip will educate tomorrow’s leaders about the effects of climate change and explore with them ways climate change can be addressed. Home to 9,000 foot tall mountains and over one-third of the remaining glaciers in the lower 48 United States, North Cascades National Park is an excellent location to explore the effects of climate change. Its northerly location and high altitude terrain make prime territory to teach about some of the earliest tangible impacts of climate change evidenced in glacier melt and species distribution.

Jeff Corwin is an Emmy award winning producer and host of numerous Animal Planet and Discovery Network television series. Presently, he serves as a correspondent for science and the environment for NBC. His most recent project, 100 Heartbeats, is a multimedia endeavor highlighting the planet’s most endangered species along with the heroes of conservation trying to save them. Beyond television, Jeff is the author of more than 10 natural history and conservation books.

Web Resources:

North Cascades National Park Glacier Monitoring Program

Do Your Part! For Climate Friendly Parks

North Cascades Institute’s Cascades Climate Challenge Program

By Elisabeth Keating, guest blogger

How can you help kids retain their learning when you’re teaching something as complex as climate change?

These tips from park rangers Will George of Lewis & Clark National Park and Autumn Carlsen of North Cascades National Park can help convey climate change to children in a compelling and powerful way.

• Focus on telling stories, not bombarding kids with boring abstract statistics.
• Involve the kids with interactive exercises like movement, song, and quizzes. You might ask kindergarteners to paint recycling bins, for example.
• Use puppets and other props to teach abstract topics.
• Keep it local. Talk about how climate change will impact the world kids know. For example, kids in the Pacific Northwest understand salmon and watershed topics. Kids who live in mountains might relate better to stories about pika and bear habitat shrinking. City kids might relate to hotter summers and needing to use more air conditioning.
• Have fun and show how we all benefit from taking care of the planet. Taking care of the planet doesn’t have to be depressing or boring. Think, “Less stuff equals more fun!”
• Set measurable, clear goals and objects for what students will learn.
• Check in frequently with your audience to assess how you’re doing. For example, as we ate lunch, the rangers asked the students to close their eyes and answer a question with a thumbs up, thumbs down, or middle thumb sign: “Think about what we did this morning. How helpful was the map we looked at the morning in learning about the North Cascades”? There’s a universal display of enthusiastic upturned thumbs. “That’s a great, very quick assessment technique to use with little kids when you’re teaching” they explain. “Be sure to check in regularly and make sure they’re interested and staying with you.”

One more tip from a recent New York Times article, Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits, reveals new cognitive research that seems to prove that the brain retains knowledge best when the study environment is varied.

“The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. … Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.

“What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting,” said Dr. Bjork, the senior author of the two-room experiment.”

If so, the Cascades Climate Challenge students should have no problem retaining the knowledge they’ve gained in the North Cascades. In the 2 days I spent with the students, our classrooms varied from the map diorama in the North Cascades Visitors Center to an auditorium where we watched an excerpt from a documentary, to an outside deck with a view of the Pickett Range, to a rocky riverbank to the inside of a tree to a cedar platform overlooking a 1400-year old ceremonial cave, to a campfire, to a humming Skagit River powerhouse. And that was one of the tamer weekends!

Elisabeth will be posting more stories from her time spent with the Cascades Climate Challenge over the coming days — stay tuned, and a big thanks to her for visiting us and writing about it in turn!

Top photo of Autumn by Rick Allen; bottom photo of Chip Jenkins and the Climate Challenge students by Benj Drummond.

By guest blogger Elisabeth Keating

“The coolest part was when we went snorkeling in Ross Lake, looking for fish. Remember how cold it was?”

“We met a Spanish forestry Ph.D. student on the boat on Ross Lake. She’s here to study how we manage our forests because in her country, the forests have been logged so much they barely have any trees left. She told us she couldn’t believe how huge and unspoiled our forests are!”

“My favorite day was when we learned all about bears and the effect of climate change on bear habitat. I didn’t know the bears we have here were endangered, I thought it was all about the polar bears.”

“I’ll never forget watching the meteor showers when we were lying on the dock last night!”

“Remember how we held hands and ran the final few yards up to Desolation Peak? I couldn’t believe we made it!”

It’s a beautiful Saturday morning in the North Cascades at the North Cascades National Park Visitors Center in Newhalem, WA. As I walk the trails, I’m regaled with tales of scientific discovery and high adventure by 19 very enthusiastic and bright high school students. Freshly back from 19 days of hiking to Mount Baker’s glaciers and summiting Desolation Peak, riding out thunderstorms on Cascade Pass and exploring the underwater world of Ross Lake, the students are full of stories and it’s all I can do to keep up. Best of all it’s not over yet: still to come are 2 final days of camping, planning school projects that will extend the students’ learning to elementary school students, brainstorming and rehearsing presentations. Tomorrow, we’ll get an inside look at Diablo Powerhouse to learn about hydro electric power—a renewable energy source that must be balanced with protecting salmon habitat.

On today’s agenda: learning about national parks and putting in some time to plan what projects the students will bring home to their schools in the fall. Last summer, I spent an incredible day exploring the glaciers of Mount Baker with the 2009 students, and I can’t wait to learn about what this year’s crop of Cascades Climate Challenge students has been up to.

At ten AM, we meet the two Park Service rangers who will be our guides for the day: Will George from Oregon’s Lewis and Clark National Historic Park, and Autumn Carlsen, from North Cascades National Park.

» Continue reading Student for a Day at North Cascades National Park Headquarters

Guest post by Lilly Nash

The first session of the Cascades Climate Challenge (CCC) is in full swing right now, with over 20 students from communities throughout Washington and Oregon learning about climate change and many interconnected over an intensive month of field studies in the North Cascades. Here’s an update on some of what they’ve been studying….

The CCC students learned early on about bear behavior, first in an amazing exploration of forest ecology, fire, habitat, mutualism and even interstellar dust with Mike Brondi at the Environmental Learning Center, and then again from Anne Braaten, a wildlife biologist for North Cascades National Park.  She drew gigantic bear prints in the dirt on a hike up Thunder Knob, as you can see here:

The next day, the students climbed like mountain goats up Sauk Mountain, reaching snowfields and stopping at a ridgeline.  We were fortunate to be joined by Don Mann, an incredible naturalist who helped us identify many flowering plants, including some wild edibles like glacier lilies. From our birds-eye view, students discussed the confluence of the Skagit and the Sauk rivers and what they could tell about the rivers from their riparian zones:

That evening we did an exercise on the sandy shore of Baker Lake, where students emulated glaciers, shuffling their feet back and forth across sand to embody the movements of lateral moraines:

The next day, our group divided up, with one half focusing on an amphibian lesson at Baker River (flat terrain, humid, replete with caves, snakes, Pacific Giant Salamanders and a toad):

and the other on a glacier lesson at Mount Baker with National Park Service geologist John Riedel tracking glacial melting rate in the North Cascades (steeper terrain, powerful water crossing experience, snowfields, visible moraines)

The next day, the two groups swapped locations.   Many people went beyond their own expectations for the more difficult hike and confidence was gained.  Both days were palpably fun.

After our return from Baker Lake, the group did laundry, took showers, made telephone calls and packed for future adventures. We also prepared to teach Kulshan Creek Neighborhood Project kids next week by sharing games techniques and ideas.  Next up: one group is setting out for canoeing at Ross Lake and the other group will be hiking Boston Basin.

It is beautiful where we are—to some extent, a reflection of these CCC students’ very fine hearts.

The North Cascades Institute Staff and Graduate students have spent weeks packing food, preparing curriculum, shuttling canoes, calling students, organizing camping gear and finalizing lessons in preparation for the first of two Cascades Climate Challenge Programs.  On June 29th twenty students from around the Pacific Northwest met for the first time at Sea-Tac Airport to began their three week journey through the North Cascades.

The first few days have been full of nerves, laughs, smiles and lots of questions as the group prepared for their first camping experience with their new community. Already these students have learned how to set up camp, use different types of media to capture their experience, explored trails on their own, and met with North Cascades National Park scientists and rangers focusing their attention on the impacts of climate change on this alpine ecosystem.

» Continue reading Introducing the 2010 Cascades Climate Challenge Team!! (Part 1)