Curriculum developers at Northwestern University and the GLOBE Program have partnered with scientists from The Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) to create student investigations of watershed behavior for local, regional, and national scales. Using specialized GIS tools, students access live scientific datasets to investigate complex earth system science issues like water availability and human impact on flood frequency. 

To ensure successful integration of My World GIS and the curriculum into the classroom, there have been two teacher professional development workshops. Through these workshops, the Watershed Dynamics curriculum has reached forty-four teachers and over 700 students.  

The curriculum is divided into two 1-2 week-long  modules targeted at middle & high school earth and environmental science classes. In the first module, Water Availability, students ask the following driving questions: "When does precipitation come?" and "Where does it go?"  Using the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) data, students look at annual precipitation, evaporation, and surface runoff data across the continental US.  Students use the GIS to query the data for areas of high and low precipitation and to create map tables to help them better visualize data. In the second module, Human Impacts on the Watershed, students look at landcover data from 2 different years and analyze change over time.  They learn about hydrographs created from real stream gages and interpret patterns in the data.
To see a summary of the curriculum, download the slideshow here: Curriculum Summary

Want to know more?
Any questions can be sent to Colleen Buzby, c-buzby@northwestern.edu
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