Week 8: Volcanic Eruption

Week Eight: Volcanic Eruption
Ozone, Trouble in the "Zone"
Weeks 7, 8, and 9 make up a three-week cycle about a volcanic eruption. Currently, you are in the Event Study week of the cycle.

This week you and your Event Team will build on the sphere to sphere interactions you identified last week to synthesize them into causal chains or causal matrices. You will use the resources listed under Readings, discuss your ideas in the Classroom Event Study Space, then submit your team’s work to the portfolio for a grade.

Assignments:

Team: (by midnight Sunday)

Read about a volcanic eruption.
Review the Event Study Goal and Rubric.
Serve as a "Sphere Expert" to your Event Team.
Read your teammates' summaries about the other individual sphere effects.
Identify intersecting and overlapping effects in your discussion in Event Space in the Classroom. Refer to the Week 3: An Example of an ESS Analysis reading if you would like to review causal relationships.

Need more detailed instructions? Click here

Submit to the Portfolio in the Classroom your team's most accurate analysis of the Earth Systems interactions with reasoning and support.

Suggested Activities for Your Students

Use modules from Exploring the Environment to engage your students in problem solving about events and environments from an Earth Systems perspective.

Use activities from Volcano World. A source for "all things volcano" for both teachers and students.

You will want to locate other resources locally and on the Internet to supplement these. Post the resources you find in Resource Space in the Classroom.

Readings

You may want to review the volcanic eruption before proceeding with this week's assignment.

"The Protective Zone." Ground Truth Studies Teacher Handbook. p. 24

"Good News and ..." Ground Truth Studies Teacher Handbook. p. 28.

LANDSAT 7 Images and Applications Click on Education to link to websites and educational materials recommended by NASA's Earth Science Enterprise.

Web Sites

Chlorine in the Atmosphere
Discusses the role of major volcanic eruptions in sending HCl into the middle stratosphere.

Ozone Facts
What is ozone and why do we care about it?

Critical Chemistry
Understanding nitrogen oxide distributions is important to understanding the production of ozone.