Score One for the Estuaries

Introduction

In this activity, students focus on how everyone is responsible for protecting and maintaining the health of estuaries. The students read stories about three students from Oregon, Alaska, and Alabama who experienced the 2010 Gulf oil spill, either directly or indirectly, to identify how these students decided to take action to help protect local waterways or estuaries. Students then read about different reserve system stewardship projects around the country and choose one project to promote with an original student-written and designed brochure. To create this brochure, they will use a planning worksheet to map out (and hopefully carry out) their own stewardship project for a nearby estuary or wetland.

This activity has three parts:

Student Stewards
Stewardship and NERRS
What Can You Do?

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Objectives

Students should understand that:

Humans can have both negative and positive impacts on the health of estuaries.
Stewardship is a way for people, including young people, to care for or maintain something such as the environment, an estuary, or wetlands.
Many people working together, even if they are young, can have a big impact on the estuaries and the wetlands.
There are a variety of stewardship activities that they can do to help lessen the impacts of climate change.

Climate Extension

We all can take actions to reduce climate change and its impacts. One way humans are able to mitigate climate change or lesson its severity is by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a combination of short-term to long-term strategies are needed. The most immediate strategy is the being conservation of oil, gas, and coal which we rely to fuel or things like transportation, agriculture, and electricity. Building new infrastructure to switch to the use of alternative, renewable energy sources represent short to mid-term strategies. Long-term strategies will require innovate research and a deep fundamental change in the way we use energy.

As a system, the NERRS are particularly concerned with atmospheric gases that contribute to climate change and endeavor to reduce their impacts. The NERRS strive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in all program aspects including: how facilities are developed, renovated, and operated; the selection and use of boats and vehicles; and how we conduct programs and meetings. The NERRS strongly believe that practices and polices followed at the Reserves as well as homes, schools, businesses and governments can affect climate. Additionally, actions taken by students and other individuals, schools, communities, states and countries all influence climate. We need to start taking actions today to make sure that we have healthy estuaries and coastal communities of the future.

Downloads Used with this Activity

National Estuarine Research Reserves: Taking Steps to Reduce our Carbon Footprint.

Additional Web Resources

Are you and your students ready to reduce your carbon footprint? Take the Climate Stewards pledge on the Washington State Department of Ecology’s website..