Teaching Tools

Several years ago, just as the public education and outreach efforts of many Phase II stormwater programs were getting under way, surveys were conducted across the country to see how much the general public really understood about stormwater-related issues. In more than one survey, a majority of respondents didn’t know what a watershed was-or else insisted they didn’t live in one.

Because of the extent of Phase II outreach, things have likely improved since then, but there’s always room for more ways to demonstrate concepts to a general audience. A few tools have emerged recently that make it easier to explain the concepts of erosion, stormwater, and the dynamic nature of the land we live on. They can be used by people at many levels-from elementary school students to urban planners-and many of them are just plain fun to play with.

A just-released tool called Streamer, for example, provides a good way to demonstrate visually what’s coming into and flowing out of your watershed. It allows you to select, on a map of the US, a stream or river and trace it upstream to its source or downstream to where it ultimately empties. You can also see statistics for the stream, such as its length, elevation at its origin, states and cities through which it passes, and stream gages the US Geological Survey has in place for it. Released by the US Department of the Interior, Streamer is available at www.nationalatlas.gov/streamer/Streamer.

The University of California at Davis has developed a sophisticated tool known as the 3-D Sandbox. To use it, though, you’ll have to visit the university’s Tahoe Science Center in Incline Village, NV. The interactive 3-D Sandbox is not just an online tool: You’ll actually plunge your hands into the sand and create the topography of your own watershed-mountains, valleys, lakes, and rivers-which is then digitally recorded with a 3-D camera. Once that’s done, you can create virtual rain on the landscape you’ve formed and watch where the water goes. More sophisticated features-dams, flood control structures-can be added, and you can see how sediment is carried and deposited as well. The Sandbox serves as both a demonstration project of sorts for other researchers who might want to try something similar (this one uses the readily available Microsoft Xbox Kinect) and a fun exercise for students.

If a trip to Lake Tahoe isn’t in your immediate future, you can access another useful tool online: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has developed Digital Coast (available at www.csc.noaa.gov/digitalcoast), which lets you model the effects of sea level rise and coastal erosion in your own community. Although not every coastal area in the US is currently modeled, more are being added. You can test the tool’s capabilities by finding the spot you live in or perhaps someplace you’ve visited, selecting a few parameters, and seeing how the area might be affected under various future conditions. It’s sobering to watch the map change, especially if you’re looking at a low-lying state like Florida. You can add many levels of detail with the tool depending on what you want to model (online webcasts and instructions explain the various features), or you can use it at a fairly basic level just to illustrate possible scenarios.

What other tools have you found useful in explaining concepts like these to the public or to students at different levels? Tell us in the comments online at www.erosioncontrol.com.