Flooding

With Global Warming and the ice caps melting, a natural effect can be increased flooding. A bad enough flood may kill hundreds, even thousands, of people and can leave thousands more homeless. Luckily, measures can be taken to minimize the damage of floods.

One way to minimize a flood’s potential harm is with a flood barrier. London has the Thames Flood Barrier, which consists of concrete piers, with ten separate rotating steel floodgates positioned across the Thames River. The Environmental Agency operates the barrier. When it no longer gives the protection needed because of rising water levels, the barrier is raised, and river walls are strengthened. This is important to London, because they are susceptible to floods.

Another way to combat a flood’s potential harm is with floodplains. This is a process (or non-process, if you will) of leaving land uncultivated. Houses in the adjacent land are protected from flooding because it only occurs on the floodplain. Wetlands are a type of floodplain. Think of them as natural sponges that trap floodwater. One advantage to Wetlands is it reduces the cost of flood protection measures such as dams and levees.

If a flood has already occurred, and the dikes are threatened, sandbagging can be implemented. This is simply (easy for me to say) taking bags upon bags of sand (or clay or silt), and use it as a barrier to prevent water from flowing through. It’s almost like a reinforced dike.

How would I use this in my classroom? This sounds like a great opportunity to utilize the E in STEM. To engineer something that can prevent water from ruining something. It would have to come near the end of the school year (once testing is over) and we have extra time on our hands. It would seem like a simple enough idea, but would take a lot of preparation and safety measures. There are a lot of wires and outlets in my room that would have to be covered or removed. Water can get all over the place. In fact, since this would be done at the end of the year, it might be a nice excuse to take the class outside and have them work with the earth. Food for thought as we move forward.

Source: www.lenntech.com

Volcanic Eruptions

An environmental issue that has not been discussed in class is Volcanic Eruptions. Since this is a natural disaster, we don’t think of it as a problem per se, because it is not within our control.

Still, it does have some negative consequences to our environment.
There are a number of toxic gases present in pyroclastic (ashes, gases and rock) flow. It contains carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide gas as well as hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride, carbon monoxide and volatile metal chlorides.

The carbon dioxide emitted from volcanoes adds to the natural greenhouse effect (warming of the earth’s surface) and the sulfur dioxides turn into sulfuric acids, which is the leading cause of acid rain. There are also sulfate aerosols which form ozone destruction materials.

Last year I had a “natural disasters” theme in my class and we did projects based around certain types of disasters, with volcanoes being one of them. The “volcano group” researched how a volcano erupts, different types of tornadoes, as well as researched famous volcanoes and wrote about what a nearby community must do to prepare for a volcano eruption. As far as the negative impact on the environment, I can’t say we did anything specific related to that, but the more the students learn about these dangerous gases and the effects on the atmosphere, the easier it will be for them to understand down the road.

Going back to the fact that this is not a man-made occurrence, I wondered if I should pick this as a topic. But then I realized that if there are dangerous things going on in our atmosphere that we can’t control, it makes the things we do control even more important to control.

Source: http://www.lenntech.com/

Acid Deposition

Acid deposition (in forms of rain, mist and fog) is a world-wide environmental concern. It doesn’t matter the pollutants originate, because the weather can bring it to neighboring countries.







Acid deposition is comprised of 70% sulfuric acid and 30% nitric acid. Sulfuric acid comes mostly from power stations, car exhausts, melting processes and home fires. Nitric acid is mainly a result of fossil fuels.




Acid deposition can have many negative environmental impacts, including, but not limited to:




· Choking plant leave pores
· Corroding stone and brick walls on monuments and buildings
· Corroding paper and rubber objects
· Altering soil chemistry (which decreases the amount of soil nutrients)
· Altering the chemical balance of lakes and streams (which can affect the ecosystems and drinking water)
· Cause difficulty for mammals to breathe.




Luckily, the world-wide community has recognized acid deposition as a serious enough problem, where action has been taken to minimize the damage. The Sulfur Emissions Reduction Protocol was enacted in 1979, and the Convention on Long-Range Trans-boundary Air Pollution was conducted in 1983.




As a fourth grade teacher, I can do lessons on cause and effect as it pertains to acid deposition. The word “deposition” is a good vocabulary word, meaning “where something is left”. Children can quickly understand that when noxious gasses enter the atmosphere from a particular smoke stack, the polluted air will travel. The air itself doesn’t care where it goes. By educating our young people on these dangers (especially if we focus on the bullet points above) they can begin to work on developing ways to solve some of these problems when they are older.




As a society, we have begun to address some of these causes of acid deposition. The president talks about lessening our dependency on fossil fuels. There are more electric cars on the road, although there is still work to be done to improve them. Personally, I don’t have a fireplace, and I know people who have them love them, but they should think twice about releasing the pollution into the air.




Source:

www.lenntech.com