Lake Watch:Undergraduate Students as Teachers of Satellite Imaging Among Volunteer Lake Monitors

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Biological Sciences (61)This project is developing an interdisciplinary curriculum bringing together two highly successful but currently separate areas of excellence at UNH. The Lakes Lay Monitoring Program (LLMP) is a 22-year veteran program wherein citizen stakeholders living on NH lakes collect water-quality data for analysis and archiving at UNH. The LLMP is being augmented with the use of remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS), drawing from strengths associated with a world-class facility housed in the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (EOS). We are recruiting a cohort of UNH sophomores, including non-science majors, to participate in the project which is adapting the Blackboard Project to connect lay lake volunteers and UNH undergraduates. They are learning to use the geo-spatial technologies (GST) to develop regional algorithms to monitor lake/watersheds from space, while learning theory and practice of limnology and microbial ecology. We are engaging the undergraduates as outreach teachers through adaptation of methods from the Gaia Crossroads Project to train the lay monitors in GST. This "Lake Watch Project" develops skills for communication, teamwork and critical thinking through hypothesis-driven, cooperative learning. The project increases faculty empowerment of undergraduates as a teaching resource and promotes faculty awareness of lecture-less teaching. It yields, through a writing- and speaking-intensive Lake Watch Seminar course, a student-prepared resource manual and a distance-learning model. The suitability of this model is being evaluated as a means of introducing lake/watershed remote sensing into other arenas, including K-12 classrooms.