Summary
Through an online Story Map activity, students will learn about glaciers, and specifically mountain glaciers in Alaska. Using repeat photography images, they will analyze changes in two of Alaska’s mountain glaciers. Students will analyze a figure showing how sediments enter glacial-fed lakes and look for geomorphic features on the satellite-view map tagged with locations from the summer’s fieldwork. The final project will be to analyze a sediment core from Goat Lake, Alaska.
Materials and Preparation
Educators should go through the Story Map on their own prior to doing this with their students. Then they can consider the pacing they need to accommodate student prior knowledge and consider where they want to supplement the lesson to better achieve class objectives. Otherwise, teachers will just need online access to this activity for every individual or pair of students.
Learning Objectives
Opening Activity
Engage – How could you learn about past climate? The educator can use a coring lesson such as the “I Cored!” activity from the Continental Scientific Drilling Facility at the University of Minnesota. Instructor and student pdf’s are below. This activity is a simple engagement tool to show them how a core is used to discover past changes in the Earth’s climate, circulation, etc. The students can circle back to this coring activity at the end in their reflection time as they solidify a deeper understanding of how lake sediment cores refine the chronology of climate changes in that area.
Activity Overview
Explore – Use the StoryMap to learn about glaciers and the evidence of past climate that glaciers leave behind in lake sediment cores. Sediment Sleuths StoryMap
Explain – Have students go over their responses to the questions in the story map in groups or with the whole class. Use your background knowledge to clarify student questions and help them scaffold their understanding of the material. If misconceptions arise, assist the students in finding a scientific response.
Elaborate – Students can elaborate on additional questions and topics that come up in this discussion or further explore topics of interest.
Evaluate – Assess student engagement and understanding. What parts of this lesson were most confusing? How would you and your students improve this lesson for deeper understanding? What next steps can you and your students take to develop deeper understanding or take this lesson further?
Reflection
Students can revisit their “Engage” coring activity and access deeper understanding from that activity after the Story Map. You can also ask students to share what they learned about glaciers, and what lake sediment cores can show about glacial history of the area.
Supporting Documents
*This resource was created by Researcher Fellow Laura Larocca and educator Mindy Bell in collaboration with Researcher Darell Kaufman. Special thanks to Mindy for her expertise and creativity.
For additional background, educators may wish to read the following paper:
Daigle, Thomas A., and Darrell S. Kaufman. “Holocene climate inferred from glacier extent, lake sediment and tree rings at Goat Lake, Kenai Mountains, Alaska, USA.” Journal of Quaternary Science: Published for the Quaternary Research Association 24.1 (2009): 33-45. Daigle and Kaufman 2009
References:
- Daigle, Thomas A., and Darrell S. Kaufman. “Holocene climate inferred from glacier extent, lake sediment and tree rings at Goat Lake, Kenai Mountains, Alaska, USA.” Journal of Quaternary Science: Published for the Quaternary Research Association 24.1 (2009): 33-45.
- Hugonnet, Romain, et al. “Accelerated global glacier mass loss in the early twenty-first century.” Nature 592.7856 (2021): 726-731.
- Immerzeel, W. Walter, et al. “Importance and vulnerability of the world’s water towers.” Nature 577.7790 (2020): 364-369.
- Larocca, Laura J., and Yarrow Axford. “Arctic glaciers and ice caps through the Holocene: a circumpolar synthesis of lake-based reconstructions.” Climate of the Past 18.3 (2022): 579-606.
- Rounce, David R., et al. “Global glacier change in the 21st century: Every increase in temperature matters.” Science 379.6627 (2023): 78-83.
- van der Bilt, Willem GM, et al. “Glacier‐fed lakes as palaeoenvironmental archives.” Geology Today 32.6 (2016): 213-218.
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Made possible with funding by the U.S. National Science Foundation Award #2221990. The information contained here is those of the author(s) and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.