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Planning out a unit of teaching

When planning out a unit of teaching, whether at the university level or earlier grades, it is important to plan the scope and sequence of your unit before you begin planning individual lessons. Lessons are usually daily activities or activities that take just a few class sessions, while a unit is a coherent set of ideas that should all relate back to one or two central notions, called Big Ideas.

Below, I laid out an example unit for a junior-level university course in environmental conservation. If you want to know more about how and why you should plan around Big Ideas and their goals, take a look at what I wrote about it on Edge Effects.

Big Idea	How we manage key resources profoundly affects planetary health. Analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the ways these resources are managed provides guidance for improving environmental governance more generally. Key Resource #5: Earth’s atmosphere as a driver of planetary temperatures.
Goal for final assessment	Students will be able to create a plan for climate change mitigation and adaptation that incorporates both social and broader environmental needs.
Key elements of student understanding underlying Big Idea	International greenhouse gas decision-making is highly complex, currently has several key interest groups based on national conditions and interests, and has not yet yielded an internationally effective agreement. At national scales, some countries have based decisions on existing international protocols and reduced emissions while others have ignored, avoided, or not been bound by international protocols and have greatly expanded emissions. At sub-national scales (e.g. state and municipal in the U.S.), some locations in the U.S. have made substantial progress toward reducing emissions and preparing for future changes.
Essential Questions for students to grapple with	How are decisions made about how to manage greenhouse gases internationally? How effective has the process been? On what bases are decisions made about greenhouse gas management within (select) countries? Which countries have reduced emissions and why? Which methods of decision-making and governance have reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.? How? Which methods of decision-making and governance have prepared municipalities and states in the U.S. for climatic change? How?
Essential Vocabulary (partial list for brevity)	“common but differentiated responsibilities,” adaptation, cap and trade, carbon credit, carbon sink, carbon source, carbon tax, clean development mechanism (CDM), climate change, COP, emissions, emissions reduction, energy conservation, global warming, IPCC, joint implementation, Kyoto protocol, negotiating blocs (e.g. group of 77), REDD+, renewable energy, UNFCCC, vulnerability
Lesson sequence for lecture periods (again, a partial list, as an example)	Intro to/Review of Physical science of climate change and its causes Debating national responsibilities for greenhouse gas emissions (based on homework on countries’ past and current emissions) Analyzing climate change impacts in rich and poor countries (lesson used as an example in Edge Effects article) Planning for climate change at the sub-national level (in Wisconsin) Assessing feasibility of alternative energy options Market-based approaches to climate mitigation
Lesson sequence for discussion sections	Introduction to city assigned to student’s class, assignment to student research groups based on aspect of city’s climate change plan (may be centered around mitigation and/or adaptation) Students assemble research conducted during past week Group presentations of adaptation/mitigation plan for area of focus within overall city plan. Representative students use presentations to build overall city plan to be presented in lecture.

New Mexican Rio Grande: Wild and Tame

My thoughts, one recent night, were on the wild things that use the river. And on whether the wild river and human uses of the river will continue to co-exist.

Rio Grande riverbed south of Las Cruces in mid-May 2015

Just the previous week, the water was released from Caballo Dam and then, just upstream from Las Cruces, Leasburg Dam. That morning, I walked across the sandy riverbed. Dry like a child’s sandbox. There had been no flow through the channel since last October, unless one or two of the local rainstorms provided a brief flush of damp.

In the Rio Grande riverbed just north of Las Cruces, waiting for the flow to begin

I watched the slow trickle of water as it approached us. Narrow rivulets covered with phosphorous soap foam built up during the dry months. As it grew to a wash, covered with four-inch-thick foam, we slowly moved out of the river bed. Backing away reluctantly. Craving the gurgling rush as we stood in 90-degree desert sun.

Walking to the east bank of the river as the water approaches

This night on the river, one week later, we are riding our bikes swiftly along the path next to the Rio’s rush. Ducks cry out and flap wildly upward, silhouetted against the sunset. We hear frogs singing on all sides. A little foam still floats on the water, but the flow fills the riverbed and logs and clumps of grass also drift rapidly by.

The smells are strong and unlike the dry, desert odors we have noticed for months. It smells of life. Wet soil, algae, vegetation rotting anoxically in the wet.

The Rio in monsoon season, 2012, just south of Las Cruces

The river before 1916
I think of the discussions of restoring flows for wildlife. Before 1916 and the construction of Elephant Butte Dam, the river flowed freely through the Mesilla Valley. It was a wild river, something like the Nile one imagines before Aswan High Dam, but without the tame expectations of consistently enriched fields.

In moments of heavy rainfall, the Rio Grande would radically change its course, swallowing houses, bursting through carefully cultivated fields and carrying away crops. Drowning people and animals. In dry times there was little relief. There was no way to save much water for irrigation through a difficult spell. Yet, this is the river the wild things knew.

The taming of the river made a far different agriculture possible. Crops grew with little fear they might wash away. Acequias stayed in place and were little damaged from year to year. Houses stayed put. The towns grew. In dry years, the stored water made all the difference.

Challenges to the river today
Even now, with the reservoirs hovering little above historic lows (lows like the massive 1950's drought), wells supplement the water allocated on the river and keep agriculture functioning. The eight acre-inches of river allotted to farmers is not enough for crops. But ever-deeper wells and pumps make growing possible. Pecans, for example, need three or four acre-feet every year, and they get it. With prices for pecans booming with Chinese demand, irrigating the trees makes financial sense.

Elephant Butte Reservoir Levels from 1915 to 2015. Graphic produced by and from data on U.S. Bureau of Reclamation site: http://www.usbr.gov/uc/crsp/GetSiteInfo

On our recent bike ride, heading back toward Mesilla from the river, the damp smells remain, as we pass flooded pecan orchards. Then, as we approach the edge of town, the faint, desert smells replace the moisture in the air.

On a satellite map, the valley is a narrow thread of green running through the dun-yellow around it. The mountains east and west of the valley, thousands of feet higher, call the rain down on themselves. They, too, look green and abundant from the sky. Both greens may be deceptive. Both depend on precipitation patterns that are changing, and possibly changing for the long-term.

Predictions of a southwest mega-drought suggest that the reservoirs may often remain at least as low as they are now. Changing patterns in snowpack, for example, may increase the length of the dry season. The number of fires and stress on plants are likely to increase while water supplies falter.

Wild animals using the lower New Mexican Rio Grande are those who can currently survive a mere 70-day run of water every year. The river bed is dry most of the rest of the year. Some species are gone or endangered because of low water levels or other habitat threats.

The humans, too, are challenged. The expense of farming increases as more electricity or fuel is needed to pump from the aquifer. Some wells fill with sand as neighbors pump heavily, causing deep cones of depression at levels where the aquifer was once always full. Up in Hatch, chile production is threatened by the aquifer's salty water.

Running more water down the river is complicated. Not just by how little is available in the reservoirs, but also by obligations to Texas and Mexico. No more surface water can legally be allocated to farming without shorting neighbors to the south. Texas is challenging New Mexico in court, saying that groundwater pumping in the Mesilla Valley is impinging on Rio Grande Compact water that is due to Texas.

Water could be released down the stream at different times of year to help certain wild species, but with total water available so low, that might not make much difference. Moreover, more water would be lost to evaporation and absorption into the river bed if the release were more than once a year. This year alone, the Elephant Butte Irrigation District estimates that 30% or more of the water it runs in the river will be lost. The drier the year, the more dessicated the riverbed and the more it soaks up before sending water downstream.

Some flow of the river, of course, contributes to recharging the local aquifers. For the purposes of what they send on to Texas, though, engineers can only count what they can measure. And they measure dam levels, velocity in canals . . . but not water entering or being pumped from the aquifer.

The whole system is connected, with above- and below-ground flows being closely intertwined. For the humans, they are both accessible. For the rest of the fauna and for the flora, though, it is surface flow that matters most.

If drought continues, it is difficult to see an effective solution that grants water to both humans and wildlife. Adequate water even for humans alone may come into question over a long enough span, as with predicted mega-droughts. The aquifer, while very deep, is not limitless, and depends on surface replenishment.

The future of the Rio Grande as a wild river, as an agricultural river, is uncertain. A willingness to look for new ideas and new modes of using water will be increasingly important as the 21st century progresses.

Pecan orchards in the northern Mesilla Valley

Farm-land in the Mesilla Valley south of Las Cruces: where the city leaves off, the farm-land begins.  All of the deep green is pecan orchards. Doña Ana County, home to most of the Mesilla Valley, harvested 25,000 acres of pecans in 2013. The county is also a substantial producer of milk, cotton, and chiles.

Bless the cow... because, Lord, we all love nachos

 Bishop Ramirez blesses a nervous milk cow, who ran off during the blessing.

Who doesn't enjoy a religious leader with a sense of humor?

Emeritus Bishop Ricardo Ramirez certainly fit the bill at the annual Blessing of the Fields today. In a procession that stopped for blessings on the animals and the irrigation water, the bishop kept things light.

An annual event at the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum, the Blessing of the Fields commemorates the Feast of San Ysidro, patron saint of farmers.

At least 100 people participated in the procession. The crowd made the museum's milk cow nervous. She  raced around the pen and refused to approach the bishop. Undeterred, he blessed her and praised her products. "Thank you for her cheese, because, Lord, we all love nachos." He was most emphatic about the importance of ice cream.

The blessing honors a saint whose miracles included completing more fieldwork than his co-workers, partly with intercession from angels. He prayed, others worked, and the angels helped him plow.

Statue of San Ysidro, carried in the procession by four, gloved attendants.

In Las Cruces, the procession includes not only the bishop's traditional attendants, but also the Cacique of Tortugas Pueblo and his attendants, who sing and drum after each of the bishop's blessings.

The bishop, leaders from Tortugas Pueblo (in orange), and Catholic school children process from the blessing of the bulls and horses to the blessing of the sheep and goats. The Organ Mountains loom in the background.

The bishop's tone was light, but the devotion of an entire event to our non-human partners in agricultural life conferred an underlying feeling of solemnity, as well. There was real respect and gratitude for the animals expressed throughout the service.





























With the last farm blessing, the white-clothed girls toss their rose petals into the irrigation water as the bishop blesses it. Then the whole procession troops back across the museum's bridge to its outdoor kitchen, where the bishop blesses the communion bread.

The bishop's work done, the spectators meander off to the museum's theater to watch baile folklorico, this year performed by Las Perlitas del Pueblo.

Las Perlitas del Pueblo

Such an event could easily come across as crass or touristy. Participants in the Blessing of the Fields in Las Cruces, however, are clearly a group of people of faith honestly celebrating their community and good fortune. It was lovely.

Losing Ice, Losing Livelihoods: Climate Change in the Bering Strait

We know that rapid warming in the Arctic is harming polar bears. How is affecting the people who live there?

In fall 2007 I was freshly returned from Niger, in West Africa. Sunbaked and as tan as a child of northern Europeans gets, I was ready to return to the North. My memories of the difficult Nigerien hunger season in 2005 were still fresh, and I returned to a United States whose news media seemed to have been revolutionized in my absence.

Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth had suddenly transformed the invisible topic of climate change into a very public and prominent issue. Or, at least, the transformation seemed sudden to me, after a three and a half year absence from the U.S.

The combination of news media focus and my own awareness of the effects of climate change in Niger meant that I went to my new job in Alaska's Bering Strait primed to hear global warming stories. And global warming stories I found.

I went to teach science in a very small school. I arrived on Little Diomede ready for what my new principal described as another Peace Corps experience. What I found was in many ways not at all a reflection of my agricultural, low-tech existence for much of my time in Niger. Yet, the stories of changing climate had many echoes of those I heard in Niger.

Some of the stories I heard in Niger included the disappearance of the seasonal pond that had brought fishing and irrigation water to the village. The millet harvests on higher, drier ground were gradually diminishing. Rains were even more erratic. The devastating hungry season in 2005 was partly from lack of rain, partly from locusts, partly from poor coordination of resources.

On Little Diomede, there were more stories of water, but here most noticeable in the sea ice, not rain. Sea ice was freezing in later each fall. Declining sea ice means disappearing opportunities.

For some time, a major form of transportation to the island has been by small planes in the winter. Planes could land only when the sea ice was solid enough to bulldoze a runway down it. Less winter ice means increasingly difficult transport to and from the island in the winter. Especially when the helicopter goes out of service, as happened last winter. Dentists, scientific researchers, mail, replacement machine parts and more all travel by plane.

At least as importantly, though, the ice serves as hunting ground in the winter months. Residents of the village hunt seals, walrus and occasionally whales on the ice (They are one of only a few communities legally permitted to hunt whales). They fish for crab from holes in the ice.

Traditionally, the diet, shaped by the sea and supplemented with summer's greens and berries, was all that was available to those living in the village. It was highly nutritious. As among other cultures like the Pima in Arizona, the addition of processed foods has brought the island some health problems. Many families still work hard, though, to maintain a highly subsistence-based diet.

As the ice season shortens, hunting and crabbing become more difficult. The chance to acquire food during the winter is limited by the warmer seas.

Compared to other Alaska native communities, Little Diomede is doing fairly well.  Shismaref is quite literally washing away. Newtok is flooding and eroding. Thinning sea ice threatens Kivalina's livelihoods. And despite plans noted on government websites and carefully developed by communities, funding for moving these villages to safe ground is not materializing.

Little Diomede is much better off than these communities that desperately need to evacuate. Nonetheless, Little Diomede's opportunities are changing. A tiny community whose subsistence depends heavily on sea ice. Yet whose transportation and heating depend on fossil fuels.

As climate change accelerates, the Arctic environment is becoming increasingly challenging for the humans who live in many of its communities. The future of communities like Little Diomede is uncertain.

Wildflowers and Drought

I was searching the desert wildflower blog for much of the month of March. I was hoping to spot when and where to find wildflowers decorating New Mexico for my parents' visit last week. 

The wildflowers were as few and far between as the blogs seemed to suggest, however. No New Mexico wildflower posts appeared until late in the month, and then only for the far southwestern section of the state. Even drought-stricken California had more posts this year. Exploring the southwestern corners of New Mexico, we did not find much either.

Although things may be looking up for New Mexico this year, with the past water year coming out at 111% of normal across the state (averaged out), it may not be doing much to make up for the long-term drought. Snowpack in most places is still clocking in below the median, and in a few places comes out far below average.

The lack of snowpack is in line with the predictions for rising temperatures and decreasing precipitation in the Southwest. The San Augustin Basin looked dry last week. My dad's memories of southern New Mexico in spring in the 1960s were, he said, a lot greener. Then again, it may just be a little early for spring that high up.

Pronghorn Antelope in the San Augustin Basin near the Very Large Array in late March.
Photo credit: ©Cathy Day

Generally, what we found for wildflowers seemed to line up pretty well with the wildflower blog. We did not see a lot of cactus or other wildflowers in bloom most places we went in our tour of the southwestern part of the state.

We did hit it lucky with a few specimens in the San Francisco River basin, however.

Desert Star? Photo credit: ©Cathy Day

Fringed Gromwell (Lithospermum incisum)
 Photo credit: ©Cathy Day

Globe Mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua)
Photo credit: ©Cathy Day

The drought continues to affect a lot of New Mexico. It is certainly still having noticeable effects in the Mesilla Valley. With Elephant Butte Reservoir still below 20% capacity, we are not seeing any water in the Rio Grande as it runs through Las Cruces. 

We will see what this El Niño year brings to New Mexico. So far, things are still looking pretty dry, despite some winter rains.