The Hudson River Plume: Exploring Human Impact on the Coastal Environment

Studying water's journey through streams, rivers, and the ocean provides a compelling interdisciplinary lens for students. It illustrates the important links among science, social science, and policy and the importance of water in everyday life. And with environmental disasters--from the Gulf Oil Spill to harmful algal blooms and marine debris--increasingly in the news, it is imperative that students understand the impact of human water and land use on the ocean ecosystem. In this article, we present the Hudson River Plume (HRP; see "On the web"), a problem-based online module that explores nonpoint-source pollution in the Hudson River ecosystem. The Hudson River transports thousands of liters of freshwater each day from the Hudson River Valley to the Atlantic Ocean--crossing over 34,700 square kilometers (13,400 square miles) and five states along the way (Phillips and Hanchar 1996). The Hudson River Watershed contains a variety of geologic, topographic, climatic, and hydrologic features and a diversity of land-use patterns--making it an ideal model for studying human impact on the coastal environment. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The HRP module provides lessons for 12, 45-minute class periods and combines hands-on laboratories and demonstrations with analysis of real oceanographic data. This data was collected from the National Science Foundation--sponsored Lagrangian Transport and Transformation Experiment (LaTTE), conducted by a team of scientists from Rutgers University; Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; the University of Massachusetts--Boston; California Polytechnic State University; the University of Florida, Gainesville; and Florida Environmental Research Institute. This authentic data engages students with important scientific practices, such as model construction and revision (Duschl, Schweingruber, and Shouse 2007), and allows them to compare models that they create to those generated by scientists. The HRP module is appropriate for use in high school biology and environmental, Earth, and marine science courses. This article presents the module and a few of its activities in more detail. A COOL classroom The HRP module was developed by a team of scientists, educational researchers, computer programmers, graphic artists, and science teachers and piloted by a national team of educators. The module--which is free of charge for teachers and students--is part of a larger web-based project called COOL Classroom (see "On the web"), named for the Coastal Ocean Observation Laboratory (COOL). The project includes lessons and modules about real-world problems that relate to oceans and coasts. Remote technologies--such as autonomous underwater gliders, coastal radar, and satellites--allow scientists to study these problems in more depth and allow teachers to share this exciting data with students. Through the COOL Classroom project, students can also virtually meet the research scientists who inspired its development. Participating scientists share stories and information about their research through baseball-like "COOL cards" and short videos. The HRP module in particular includes the personal stories of nine scientists who conduct coastal and ocean research. The HRP module The HRP module uses the Ocean Literacy Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts (Ocean Literacy 2010) to organize learning around the ocean-related concepts of watersheds, density, nonpoint pollution, and eutrophication. It features a combination of online and laboratory-based lessons in which students investigate the impact of the Hudson River's freshwater on the coastal marine environment. This and other COOL Classroom modules meet National Science Education Standards for content and inquiry-based teaching (NRC 1996; see "Addressing the Standards," p. 46). The HRP module can be used with each student at a single computer, in small groups (preferred), or as a whole class working with a whiteboard or computer-based projector. …