Watershed Management

Bruce Herbert

Geology & Geophysics, Texas A&M

This activity is part of the On the Cutting Edge Peer Reviewed Teaching Activities collection. (view details)

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Scientific Accuracy
Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
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Initial Publication Date: April 24, 2010 | Reviewed: October 22, 2012 (see revision history: 2 events)

Summary

Geoscience, Ecology, Water Quality and Quantity, Ecosystems | College Upper (15-16)

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Context

Audience

Upper-division majors course in environmental geology

Skills and concepts that students must have mastered

Skills: analogous reasoning, conceptual model development, interpretation of environmental data

How the activity is situated in the course

Culminating project

Goals

Content/concepts goals for this activity

Knowledge: water quality, fate and transport, watershed management, ecological restoration, risk assessment

Higher order thinking skills goals for this activity

In this project, I ask students to use analogous reasoning to support the development of an accurate and rich conceptual model about a specific environmental issue using evidence collected from two watershed studies that were part of the NAWQA program.

Analogical reasoning is a method of processing information that compares the similarities between new and understood concepts, and then uses those similarities to gain understanding of the new concept. The use of analogical reasoning can be divided into four steps:

Generating the analogy: A well understood case is compared to a less familiar or target case,
Understanding the analogous case: An understanding of the relationships between attributes in the familiar case is sought,
Determine validity of analogy: Similarities and relationships between the familiar case and the target case are evaluated, and
Apply findings: Attributes from the familiar case are transferred to the target case