Working With Watersheds Kit

Model watersheds and the impact of infrastructure, and see how human behavior can lead to human illness. Working With Watersheds can help your student uncover the relationship between human actions and human health. 

This kit allows your student to use computational simulations to demonstrate anthropogenic impact on ecosystems and, as a result, human health, as well as build their own watershed models to measure runoff differences as a result of added human infrastructure.

Working With Watersheds is a Launch level kit that includes a full-color student workbook and a detailed teacher guide, with step-by-step instructions for both hands-on and reading-based activities designed to engage students in cyanobacteria, watersheds, and human impact. Both teacher and student will be able to open the box and start within minutes, and the kit will provide over 14 hours of engaging learning.

Your student is ready for this kit when they know how to use spreadsheet software, such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.

In this kit, the student will engage in these learning experiences:

1. Investigate human influence on natural systems with a story and a series of news reports.
2. Experiment to determine what organism might cause human illness.
3. Discover which human behaviors lead to cHAB.
4. Crunch numbers to numerically visualize the natural processes of Earth, and how humans can create negative and positive changes.
5. Look at a watershed in your area to determine a possible solution that can reduce anthropogenic change and cHAB occurrences. 

Use the Working with Watersheds kit to answer questions such as:

• What causes green sludge to build up in waterways?
• What is cyanobacteria?
• Who is responsible for cHAB?
• How does cHAB happen?
• Where is cyanobacteria present?

Interested in learning more? Check out our Student Workbook Sample and Teacher Guide Sample!

Safety Information (SDS)

Activity 2 Simulated Experiment

• Learning outcome: Model the relationships between humans, watersheds, and natural resources to show how the activities of people affect ecosystems, biodiversity, and even human health.
• NGSS science standards alignment
• HS-ESS3-3 Create a computational simulation to illustrate the relationships among management of natural resources, the sustainability of human populations, and biodiversity.
• HS-ESS3-4 Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.
• HS-ESS3-6 Use a computational representation to illustrate the relationships among Earth systems and how those relationships are being modified due to human activity.