AP Environmental Science Hazards Research Project.

Objective: Choose one Superfund site in the United States and complete a research report answering the following research questions:

1. What is Superfund and what makes a location a Superfund Site?
2. What is the history of the site you chose?
3. What hazards exist at the site you chose? Describe them in detail.
4. What risks exist at your site?
5. How has or might the site be cleaned up? Describe any current or former clean up activities.
6. What is the current site status?

Process:

1. Start by choosing a site from the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) website. You can search by location, choose one at random, or choose one that Mr. Whitney has worked at before (See list below). 
2. Choose a format to complete your report. Written Research Paper or PowerPoint Presentation. If you have another presentation format please get approval from Mr. Whitney. Reports are due FRIDAY MAY 18th. If you choose a PowerPoint project it must be presented in class on FRIDAY!
3. Research your topic using the Research Questions as a guide.
4. You must create a list of citations using the MLA format for every source you use for your report. Remember www.google.com is not a source. This includes pictures.
5. Use more than one source to collect your information.
6. Use How to Write an A+ Research Paper as a guide for writing your report. If you are completing a PowerPoint presentation you must still create and turn in a typed outline for your report. Your presentation must include citations for all sources of information and images, and you must answer all research questions in detail.
7. Read the Rubric below to see how you will be graded.

Some Superfund Sites that your teacher has worked at.

1. Fort Devens, MA
2. Fort Devens, Sudbury Training Annex, Sudbury, MA
3. Groveland Wells, Groveland, MA
4. Otis Air National Guard Base, Cape Cod, MA
5. Materials Technology Laboratory, Watertown, MA
6. Eastern Surplus Company, Meddybemps, ME
7. Eastland Woolen Mill, Corinna, ME
8. Hanford, WA

Rubric

5. You have completed a research project about a Superfund site that answers the 6 Research Questions in great detail. You have completed a typed report or presentation that has an introduction, body, and conclusion or equivalent slides. You have included all citations in MLA format for all sources of information and images. You have written the report entirely in your own words unless it is a direct quote that has been properly cited. If you have completed a presentation you have presented it on time and included a typed outline.

Non-Renewable Resources

Non-renewable Resources Summary

1. Visit U.S. Energy Information Administration website to review the basics (this site is geared towards younger students but the information is great). Be sure to review what non-renewable resources are and check out the History of Energy timelines for non-renewables.
2. Create your own version of Cornell Notes for the Non-renewable Resource Summary above.

The following objectives will be our goal after studying non-renewable resources.

1. Distinguish between renewable and non-renewable energy sources.
2. Outline the formation and recovery of fossil fuels and their current and future roles in U.S. energy supply.
3. Describe the consequences of extracting and burning coal, natural gas, and oil.
4. Evaluate the benefits and costs of nuclear power.

Time permitting the funnelbrain.com site has flashcards as a resource for studying APES content.

The World at 7 Billion

1. Go to the BBC News site - The World at 7 Billion and find out which number were you (hint: you must input the day you were born before entering the month and year). Answer the following questions in your notebook.

• What is currently the fastest growing country?
• What is currently the fastest shrinking country?
• What is the average yearly growth of the United States? Is this a lot?
• What did you learn about life expectancy?

2. Complete the Climbing the Ladder worksheet given to you by Mr. Whitney. You may work with a partner.

3. Next: Go to www.prb.org. Click on the “DataFinder” tab at the top of the page. Find the 25

countries you selected on the Economic Ladder Worksheet on the drop-down menu under “World

Data.” When you click on each of these countries’ names, a list of statistics will appear. Find the number for the Total Fertility Rate (TFR). This is the average number of children born to a woman during

her lifetime. Place the countries on a chart (see below) according to their TFRs.

0-1.4/woman

1.5-1.9/woman

2-2.4/woman

2.4-2.9/woman

3-3.4/woman

3.4-3.9/woman

4-4.4/woman

4.5-4.9/woman

5-5.4/woman

5.5-5.9/woman

6-6.4/woman

6.5+/woman

Cycles

1. Let's review the water cycle. Go to Dr. Art's Guide to Planet Earth and follow the directions for using the three animations to learn about the hydrologic (water) cycle.
2. Answer the following questions in your notebook.
1. Which resevoir is the largest?
2. How much water cycles through it per year?
3. How many years does the average water molecule stay in the ocean?
4. 71,000 cubic kilometers evaporates from land each year. If 1 cubic kilometer is equal to 2.64172052 × 10¹¹ US gallons, how many gallons per year evaporate from land each year?
5. How many gallons per day evaporate each year?
3. What does transpiration have to do with the hydrologic cycle?
4. What other forms of matter cycle through the biosphere? 

Ecological Footprint

How much land area does it take to support your lifestyle? Take this quiz to find out your Ecological Footprint, discover your biggest areas of resource consumption, and learn what you can do to tread more lightly on the earth.

APES Summer Institute

Below are the web sites that I bookmarked this past school year for APES. I numbered the 10 sites I liked best at the top and the rest of the links are random. If you click the topic APES on the right side of the screen labeled TOPICS, you can see all of the assignments my students worked on (mostly in the computer lab). Unfortunately, the user names and passwords have expired.

1. UC AP Environmental Science
2. UC AP Virtual Labs
3. HippoCampus (APES Site)
4. PBS Nova
5. PBS Nature (Full Length Episodes)
6. The Environmental Literacy Council - AP Environmental Science Course Material
7. Earth Days | American Experience | PBS Video
8. Population Data 2010
9. Advanced Placement Summer Assignment
10. Trash Track

• APES Course Home Page
• AP Environmental Science Chapter 3- The Solid Earth - Encyclopedia of Earth
• Practice Quizzes
• A Small Dose Of... The History of Toxicology
• It's About Time
• Love Canal, Times Beach, Libby Talking Points Memo
• AP Central
• UCCP Open Access Course categories
• UCMP Web Time Machine
• The World of 100
• Video -- Animals, Travel, Kids -- National Geographic
• apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/env-sci-2008-scoring-worksheet.pdf
• Making Stuff: Cleaner | NOVA | PBS Video
• Mark Bittman on what's wrong with what we eat | Video on TED.com
• Johan Rockstrom: Let the environment guide our development | Video on TED.com
• AP Environmental Science Glossary
• Global Ozone Project - GO3 Home
• REC Worcester
• Japan nuclear crisis: Fukushima 50 'expect to die' - Telegraph
• DOE - NNSA/NSO -- Historical Test Films
• How dangerous is nuclear power? Three lessons from Japan. - 3. How safe is 'safe enough'? - CSMonitor.com
• Scientists see a region largely unprepared - The Boston Globe
• Environmental Laws

Ecology

Explore the sites listed below about ecology. They are organized by the different standards you are supposed to know and understand. Your best bet is to right click and open each site in a new tab so you can easily come back to these instructions.

Standard 6.1 - Explain how birth, death, immigration, and emigration influence population size.

• Go to www.explorelearning.com and complete the Food Chain gizmo and answer the multiple choice questions. Find login information at the bottom of this page.

Standard 6.2 - Analyze changes in population size and biodiversity (speciation and extinction) that result from the following: natural causes, changes in climate, human activity, and the introduction of

invasive, non-native species.  

• Choose from many Biodiversity Games
• Play Nab the Aquatic Invader (if you have not already)

Standard 6.3 - Use a food web to identify and distinguish producers, consumers, and decomposers, and explain the transfer of energy through trophic levels. Describe how relationships among organisms (predation, parasitism, competition, commensalism, mutualism) add to the complexity of biological communities.

• Interactive Food Web (try to solve the mystery)
• Meet the parasites ... (if you haven't met them already)

Standard 6.4 - Explain how water, carbon, and nitrogen cycle between abiotic resources and organic matter in an ecosystem, and how oxygen cycles through photosynthesis and respiration.

• Play the Carbon Cycle Game
• How do you think Water and Nitrogen cycle through the environment?

Miscellaneous Sites (Thursday, June 23, 2011)

• Exploratorium's Fun Activities and Experiences
• Optical Illusions
• Search whitneyscience.blogspot.com by topic

Explorelearning.com login information (username password).

1. StudentO298 ant247
2. StudentT134 egg613
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24. StudentT611 lake198
25. StudentT378 rain547
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