e·phem·er·al               ------->	Years of Development: In our culture, nearly everywhere on earth, it seems easier, or even imperative at times, to only look at the short term affects of our actions & decision making. This is also true of land development. Explore this topic through looking at ecological destruction & fragmentation, specifically at California's vernal pools.
	My Community, Our Earth Project Geographic Learning for Sustainable Development (MyCOE) Air Quality and Environmental Justice (pdf)
	children as community reseachers

by Chris Lawrence

I asked the students what they thought about the quality of the water in their town, West Branch, Iowa, a small rural town of about 5,000 people. Do they think the water is good? Polluted? Jake immediately said we should check out the creek near the concrete plant, he thinks it is polluting by the way the water looks. I asked if we could find out what kinds of chemicals concrete plants produce, or this plant produces, and if they could get into the ground or water? Jake goes on to describe how the water also smells. I asked how these clues can be used to determine what are possible pollutants. What would sulfur smell like? Several answer, Rotten eggs! Well, does the concrete plant use sulphur, or something that smells like this? I had put a large map of the West Branch area on the wall. Students located the concrete plant on the map and how close it is to the Wapsinonac Creek. They also wanted to know about the map. Where did I get it? I told them it was from a topographic map of the West Branch quadrant. That I enlarged it, but I had only copied some of the relief lines. I asked if they knew what a topographic map was and one student explained it shows the hills. I asked, What does the 790 mean?. A student explains it is the height. Another adds ...it is feet above sea level. I asked how the topography might effect pollution. Is it important when thinking about pollutants? Why? Several ideas were raised and discussed about the flow of water.

Some students jokingly told me I had the Sewage Disposal Plant in the wrong spot. Hmm? I said it must have been moved since the map was made in 1984. They wanted it located in its rightful place on the map, so a couple of students jumped up and labeled it correctly on the map. Other students were concerned with a hog facility north of town. Yea, blame the farmers! The farmers are always to blame!, one student expressed in frustration. I said, Is this a confinement facility or just a small farm operation with a few hogs? The answer , confinement. I asked, What would be the difference concerning pollution? John offered an explanation of what confinement meant..."large numbers of hogs confined in a small space". I asked if this would make a difference in pollution and how? They said that both the number of hogs in a small area was important as well as the operations of a confinement facility since a large amount of waste is flushed out during cleaning. What would be in this waste? All the students knew it would be a form of nitrogen. We also talked about whether there would be anything else in the waste or other hazards from the facilities. The question was unanswered but left as a possible topic to search in the media center.

In less than one classroom period, the context was set for many possible avenues and further learning experiences. Learning in relevant contexts can also help lead to a more 'connected knowing' as advocated by Belenky, et al. (1997). Just as indigenous people have traditional environmental knowledge (Snively & Corsiglia, 1998), children living in different environments and different 'cultures' have local and practical knowledge they use in interpreting the world around them. A previous study (Lawrence, et al., 1996) provided one window into how rural adolescents' integrate many different ways of knowing when asked to reason about science-based issues. One eighth grade student responded to a realistic scenario about the possibility that pollutants in the river could be causing many illnesses in the town.

In this situation I would study the river. Start at the very south end of town and put on chest waders and walk up town to the end were the farmland meets. Now this town looks a little bigger and it would take longer to walk so start at the north end of town and float down stream with a flat bottom boat and examine it. When looking for things I would look for culverts dumping into the river and for streams that run into the river that come from the farm ground. The stuff that is contaminating the water is farm chemicals I think. It said in the paragraph that it was raining a lot up north. That leds me to believe that it is spring. Farmers are preparing fields for planting at this time and that means that they are applying nitrogen now to. They are also slurry spraying their fields with hog manure. When it would rain the nitrogen (some of it) would run into the stream or river in this case. If you have farmland around the river for many miles your talking about a lot of acres, and if they all aplied nitrogen or hog poop then it could shurly contaiminate the water. The paragraph said it was raining up north. North is the direction on the map were the farmland was and the farmland is were there getting the fields ready and the river runs by and thats were the nitrogen runoff runs into. The way I would test to see if my ideas were accurate is by taking a water test above the farmland. I would then drive down and take a test in the river before the golf course. If the tests are different (north low levels of nitrogen, south high levels of nitrogen) then it is happening in the strech of water.