WEST Gives School Students a Taste of Great Salt Lake

School students get a chance to do "real" research on Great Salt Lake

Over six hundred students from the Salt Lake City School District are getting a taste of what it’s like to be a real research scientist on Great Salt Lake through a series of field trips lead by the WEST (Water, the Environment, Science and Teaching) program at the University of Utah. WEST has teamed up with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Friends of Great Salt Lake to create a field experience for kids that puts them on a boat on Great Salt Lake netting brine shrimp, collecting water samples for chlorophyll testing, reading bathymetric maps and learning about the lake’s fragile ecosystem. These experiments simulate the activities of researchers involved in an actual water quality study of the lake lead by the Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Water Quality. The DEQ’s study will ultimately produce a water-quality standard to protect the invertebrates, shorebirds, and waterfowl that utilize Great Salt Lake. Students will contribute the data they collect on the field trip to an online database provided by researchers and make observations about how the properties of the lake change throughout the year. It is hoped that the interactions of the students with the scientists and their involvement in a real research cruise will give context and meaning to the concepts learned and solidify an interest in science and the Great Salt Lake ecosystem.

See KSL TV's news coverage here: http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=579055

Read the Salt Lake Tribune's story here.

You can read more about the project at: http://www.slc.k12.ut.us/staff/kenobr/model_lessons/District_Laketrip.htm

Personal tools

Document Actions