John B. Ritter: Using An Ecosystem Services Approach to Water Resources in Environmental Geology at Wittenberg University
About this Course
An introductory course for both science and non-science majors; not required for the geology major but may be the gateway course for a major.
30
students
Three 60-minute lectures and one three-hour lab per week
Ritter Syllabus for Environmental Geology (Microsoft Word 69kB Jun21 16)
Introduction to applied geology for science and non-science students. The geologic basis for natural processes that are hazardous to humans and cause environmental problems associated with use of the natural or modified environment is discussed. Topics include flooding, mass wasting, soil erosion, water supply use, and pollution and waste disposal. Every year.
Students in this course evaluate hazardous geologic processes (e.g. volcanism, flooding, mass wasting) and natural resources (e.g., water resources, soils, wetlands) in a data-intensive way, the circumstances of their occurrence, and the impact humans have on them, and apply this understanding to hazard mitigation and resource conservation.
A Success Story in Building Student Engagement
My course is an introductory environmental geology course taken by science and non-science students with content split between natural hazards and natural resources. The course is data-driven, using locally-available data or data from the U.S. Geologic Survey and state surveys, to analyze hazards and resources and their mitigation. This module was used to cover water resources but from the context of ecosystem services which, in my opinion, tended to broaden the interest among the biology majors in the course. Students went from focusing on the generalities of ecosystem services that they mostly understood in a biotic context to using them to contextualize changes in the hydrologic cycle due to land-use change. They used streamflow data from watersheds under different land uses to quantify changes in runoff with development and impervious surfaces, they used a national model to assess changes in runoff, infiltration, and evaporation with land-use change, and they applied that information to a local, campus issue associated with planned construction on campus. The module culminated in a presentation to, and discussion with, members of the university administration who were actively engaged in decisions on how to handle stormwater from the planned facility.
Students actively participated in a discussion of how new stormwater generated by an athletic practice facility, the groundbreaking of which is planned for our campus next year, will be mitigated. Our community is aggressively addressing stormwater issues, so the interplay between students, the university, and the city's urban stormwater coordinator was an invaluable learning experience.
My Experience Teaching with InTeGrateMaterials
I substituted the module for content I normally would have covered concerning water resources. I dropped some lecture content on groundwater and several lab activities associated with surface water and groundwater resources. While the module was decidedly different in approach and some content, it allowed me to experiment with a different way of teaching and to evaluate the potential for using other modules on natural hazards and resources from the SERC InTeGrate site in my course.
Relationship of InTeGrate Materials to my Course
My environmental geology course is a semester-long course, divided into two halves, the first half covering natural hazards (e.g., volcanism, earthquakes, mass wasting) and the second half covering natural resources (e.g., surface water and groundwater resources, soils, wetlands). It consists of three hour-long lectures and a three-hour lab each week. The module is designed to be completed in three weeks, in three lecture periods per week.
The additional time associated with the lab allowed me to break up module work to include lab and field activities associated with water resources. In some cases, these activities were modified from existing activities so that they could be related to the module (i.e., a stream table lab was modified to illustrate regulating and supporting ecosystem services of floodplains and meandering rivers) and created new activities directly related to the module (i.e., a walking tour of campus structures designed to handle stormwater runoff and an off-campus field trip in association with our city's urban stormwater coordinator to examine other stormwater structures in our combined sewer overflow system).
I did not introduce related concepts or material prior using the module, though in hindsight I wish I had introduced systems and associated terms and concepts more deliberately during the course introduction. Following the module, I was able to use the ecosystem services framework and the information on water resources as the class shifted to soil resources and wetlands. Between these two topics, I could fully incorporate provisioning, cultural, and supporting services. They dovetailed nicely with content and activities, providing an overarching framework for natural resources that I will incorporate in the second half of my course in the future.
Unit 1: Recognizing Ecosystem Services and their Relation to the Hydrologic Cycle
This introductory unit is the most instructor-intensive, in my opinion. It sets up the final two units that are largely student-driven and time on task.
The conceptual framework for ecosystem services is introduced in the beginning through a visual-rich introduction of land use and cover and their change over time. Google Earth (and its historical imagery) is an invaluable tool for the introduction and can be used interactively with the PowerPoint presentation. In the future, I will modify this presentation to include the local setting as much as possible, including incorporating changes on campus that will be important to Units 2 and 3, including the final presentation. I handed out a table from the Millenium Assessment organizing and describing ecosystem services so we were working from a common framework and language.
The transition to the hydrologic cycle should stress the relation between terms associated with the hydrologic cycle and mostly known to students on a certain level (e.g., precipitation, runoff, evaporation, transpiration) with ecosystem surfaces. By referring to land use and land cover and its impact on say, runoff or infiltration and their relation to regulating ecosystem services, this will go smoothly. The rainfall-runoff data from the two watersheds is critical evidence demonstrating that land use impacts runoff. Rainfall-runoff data were collected from available data from watersheds that are as similar in area, slope, and other relevant watershed characteristics and hydrologic variables like annual precipitation as possible. The only exception is land use, dominated by agriculture in watershed and urban development in the other. Using this information to set up some of the habits of science (i.e., controls, variables) will help students brainstorm and understand potential reasons for the difference in runoff. Again, referencing specific ecosystem services (e.g., water regulation, natural hazard regulation) is critical here to maintain the integrity of the ecosystems approach.
The PowerPoints and instructor teaching notes and tips in general are extensive and contain more information and activities than are necessary to include in your course to make it successful. This is particularly true in Units 1.2 and 1.3. I would encourage adopters to tailor these materials to their expertise and their course needs to make them most successful. In the future, I will eliminate some of the slides on land use classification and land use change and rely on Google Earth for this. Working with the rainfall-runoff data was critical, but in the future I will have students do some of this as homework, entirely in Excel, and bring their results to class for group discussion.
Unit 2: Measuring and Modeling Ecosystem Services
I followed the activity outlined in the instructor notes and tips fairly closely in Units 2.1 and 2.2. The units are dominated by tutorial work associated with the EPA's Stormwater Calculator. The activities rely on the Calculator, and use of the Calculator is restricted to Windows-based systems. To alleviate the problems associated with this, I had the software loaded on computers in a campus computer lab. I introduced the software to students while in the lab, and they worked on the first two tutorials (Units 2.1 and 2.2) during class time. Because they worked in groups of two and three around computers, this facilitated the transition to larger group work (i.e., groups of 5–6) in Unit 2.3. Part of the work in Unit 2.3 was completed during a lab session, which helped facilitate organization of tasks within student groups related to the model simulations and creation of the presentation.
Three critical tips here:
- Unit 2.1. In introducing the Stormwater Calculator model to students in Unit 2.1, illustrate (or even map) the processes modeled to the hydrologic model presented in Unit 1.2. The input for the model is related directly (e.g., precipitation) or indirectly (e.g., soils or slope and their control on infiltration and runoff) to the hydrologic cycle.
- Unit 2.2. Low Impact Development (LID) controls are introduced in Unit 2.2. The relationships between LID controls and processes or reservoirs in the hydrologic cycle and ecosystem services are important. General discussion of these relationships can and should occur in class, but the assessments for these units explicitly ask students to make these relationships and will help the instructor evaluate student understanding of them. What may be important here is illustrating examples of LID controls to students. Table 2 in the National Stormwater Calculator User's Guide Version 1.1 is a good introduction. On three occasions, I did short walks on campus and an off-campus field trip to introduce some examples of LID controls, discuss their pros and cons relative to ecosystem services, and interact with the city's stormwater coordinator. Other community officials who might be appropriate to involve include watershed coordinators, members of local environmental and land preservation groups, and technicians or administrators of the county soil and water conservation district.
- Unit 2.3 Incorporate a local land-use change here, a real or hypothetical (but realistic) change that engages students. The examples in the Description and Teaching Materials section demonstrate a common template for creating these that can be adapted locally. In my case, the proposed change involved an indoor athletic practice facility being constructed on what is currently a practice field, albeit a green space. It is costly but will attract students, impacts some students (i.e., student athletes) more than others, and has some community interest relative to hosting some indoor events. It also requires that new stormwater generated is dealt with. So there are many facets to it. This was rich from a student perspective and engaged them directly.
Unit 3: Using an Ecosystem Services Approach for Civic Engagement
After going over the final student presentations, I talked to the class about making a presentation to an outside stakeholder group—members of the university administration who were directly involved in the planning and fundraising for the athletic practice facility. I suggested that I would select one presentation to present our class group work, but that the remainder of the class would be involved in the broader discussion that followed. The stakeholder group included the athletic director and two members of advancement, one of them charged with fundraising for the facility and having recently come from Oberlin College with its state-of-the-art environmental science building (runoff neutral, green roof, recycled water, LEED Gold-certified, etc). Following the presentation, there was back and forth discussion between students and our guests, founded on modeled data of the facility's impact on the rainfall-runoff relationship using different scenarios. This was about as engaged as I have ever seen students in a normal class of 24–30 members, and especially so with the athletes in the room.
Assessments
I used the assessments that we originally designed for the module. There were many of them. It was difficult for students from the perspective that it involved so much more activity inside and outside of class than came before the introduction of the module. In some respects, if I include other modules prior to this, the change will not be so dramatic. I felt each was useful for my assessment of their participation and understanding, so I am not ready to eliminate any of them. I actually added an additional quiz during Unit 1.2 to emphasize the need to read materials prior to class.
We included a reflective essay in Unit 3.2. I did not use it because of the preparation for the presentation, but I will in the future. Other members of the module team used it, and their results convinced me of its value. In fact, in our modifications of the module, we have incorporated it into the final summative assessment.
Outcomes
My primary goal, both in design and implementation of the module, was to become more acquainted with best practices associated with active teaching. In hindsight, I would add to that list backward design of course activities for assessment purposes and effective assessment of student learning in general. For my students, I hoped for more active engagement by students with material in class and its relation to their daily lives. Student participation in the final presentation and discussion demonstrated to me success in this goal. And the module itself presented them with a tool which they can use in the future if they become in involved land use and land-use change issues.
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