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Stormwater Challege

Overview

The Stormwater Geocache Challenge activity challenges students to use GPS to search Killcreek Park to find a series of caches
 and complete challenges with the environmental theme of Stormwater Assessment. There is a total of 8 quests, each with a series of stormwater questions and experiments. The goal of each quest is to raise student awareness of stormwater issues and in the process do water quality testing, tree and animal track identification, site assessment, and other activities related to the scientific understanding of stormwater run-off reduction. Each team starts with a different quest route and rotates through the quest until they have completed all eight.


Detailed information on water testing can be found on this website and used to supplement the lesson.
 

Materials

GPS unitss ( 1 for each group) 
Copies of Stormwater Asssessment challenge cards
Plastic bags or waterproof containers for the cache at each site 
Flags for the challenge stations - Use to identify the location of the individual challenges, this will help each group determine what site they are
at (if at the correct site)
A large plastic container for site 2
Identification cards for the tree and track identification stations
A bag for each group containing:
Pencils, Stormwater Assessment challenge cards, tape, scissors, small plastic bowls, Nitrate testing strips

Methods

Preparation (The Day before)

Determine the boundaries of your search area and then scout out the area. When you find a good spot for a cache site, enter in the 
waypoints in ALL the GPS units. (We provide a set of GPS coordinates below that can be used in Kill Creek Park starting at Shelter House 2). Print out the cards in the attachment section at the bottom of this page (you can use 4 x 6 cards and make them into a field notebook).

The Morning Of

Sort out materials that need to go into each ziplock bag for the caches. Make sure you have enough for each group if they need to take an item with them. Then put the ziplock bags at the appropriate cache sites.

Class Time

1)  Talk about stormwater run-off and get kids involved by asking them what they know about stormwater. Where does it go? Where does our drinking water come from? 

2) Explain the activities for the day. 

3) Explain what each group has in their bag and what needs to be done on the index cards when they get to each cache

4) Explain what Geocaching is, and how to navigate with a GPS unit. Test the kids on their understanding by having them find a "test" cache point that is nearby.

5) Once the groups all understand what to do, they head out to their first cache destination. Each group starts of at a different cache site so they are not following each other or running into each other. 

6) If there are enough instructors you can post "experts" near the various caches to help explain the lesson. Alternatively, you can bring the groups together at the end to discuss what they found and why they may have different answers.


Suggested GPS coordinates for Kill Creek Park

Shelter  2

N38.54.753'

W94.58.324' 

Site 1

N38.54.726'

W94.58.258'

Site 2

N38.54.671'

W94.58.189'

 

Site 3

N38.54.773'

W94.58.294'

 

Site 4

N38.54.826'

W94.58.378'

 

Site 5

N38.54.848'

W94.58.500'

 

Site 6 

N38.54.903'

W94.58.502'

 

Site 7

N38.54.844'

W94.58.540'

 

Site 8

You will need to identify places with animal tracks for this site



ĉ
Laura Calwell,
Jul 15, 2010, 3:10 PM