Terrascope Guiding Principles The Earth system provides a context for learning basic science and engineering concepts Students put those concepts to use in creative ways to understand the interdependency of physical chemical and biological processes that shape our planet Students explore how these concepts may be used to design protocols to ensure a sustainable environment Program emphasizes both theory and practice and puts a premium on active learning Terrascope Structure First Semester Solving Complex Problems Mission 2xxx Second Semester 1 016 Terrascope Field Experience Spring Break Terrascope Radio Solving Complex Problems Multidisciplinary project based learning experience Students work toward a solution to a deceptively simple problem related to Earth s environment Each year s theme is different and referred to as Mission XXXX where XXXX refers to the graduation year of the class involved Solving Complex Problems Motivation To build in you the capacity to tackle the big problems that confront society To encourage you to take charge of the learning process To show you how to do independent research to evaluate the quality of information sources and to synthesize different information Solving Complex Problems Motivation To encourage you to think about optimal solutions rather than correct solutions To help you learn how to work effectively as part of a team To improve your communication skills using two media the web site and the formal oral presentation To convince you of your potential Past Missions Develop a viable plan for the exploration of Mars with the aim of finding evidence for life Design permanent manned underwater research laboratories and develop detailed research plans for the first six months of their operation Design the most environmentally sensitive strategy for hydrocarbon resource extraction from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and determine whether or not the value of the resource exceeds its financial and environmental cost Past Missions To develop strategies for developing countries in the Pacific basin to cope with tsunami hazards and disasters Due to the unique needs of each country we specifically focused on developing plans for Peru and Micronesia To develop a plan for the reconstruction of New Orleans and the management of the Mississippi River and the Gulf coast The reconstruction of New Orleans and the management of the Mississippi River and the Gulf coast Past Missions To develop strategies to deal with the collapse of the global fisheries and the general health of the oceans To develop a plan to ensure the availability of fresh clean water for western North America for the next 100 years Subject Structure Problem divided into approximately ten tasks students divided into teams Each team assigned a Teaching Fellow Alumni Mentors and Disciplinary Mentors Four meeting styles Presentations on methodology Case study discussions Team workshops Coordination meetings Subject Deliverables Each student develops a personal wiki Each team will communicate through wikibased structure Each class describes and justifies its overall plan in a web site Each class explains the design in a two hour presentation before a panel of experts and a general audience Mission 2011 Mission 2012 What I have learned is that passion along with curiosity drives science Passion is the mysterious force behind nearly every scientific breakthrough Perhaps it s because without it you might never be able to tolerate the huge amount of hard work and frustration that scientific discovery entails For the next four years you will get to poke around the corridors of your college listen to any lecture you choose work in a lab The field of science you fall in love with may be so new it doesn t even have a name yet You may be the person who constructs a new biological species or figures out how to stop global warming or aging Maybe you ll discover life on another planet My advice to you is this Don t settle for anything less Nancy Hopkins a professor of biology at M I T has been teaching since 1973 Extracted from OP ED contribution in New York Times September 5 2009 Subject Grading Individual performance 30 Team performance 30 Class accomplishment 40 Wikis Share files in teams class Avoid large attachments please All files online Set permissions who can read edit Know about others work Avoid doubling up missing topics Get good quality writing early You ll be happy later we promise Wikis structure One wiki One section per team All read team read write One section per student inside team All read student read write Wiki requirements Each student Keep ongoing journal as a wiki page Ideas progress problems One or two paragraphs UPDATE EVERY WEEK Each team Write research online different pages per topics Show progress every week Mission 2013 Your Mission is to propose an integrated global solution to the rapid rise in atmospheric CO2 that will stabilize concentrations at an economically viable and internationally acceptable level CO2 and global temperatures Correlation of global temperature and CO2 CO2 emissions Mission 2013 Humans depend on the consumption of massive amounts of fossil fuels that in turn pump large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere Mission 2013 Increased CO2 may lead to mean global temperatures that will destabilize ice sheets raise sea level and decrease pH of seawater All of these could disrupt life as we know it for billions of people Mission 2013 If we continue to consume fossil fuels at current rate for next 300 years we will have levels of CO2 not attained for the past 55 million years CO2 Sequestration Burial in spent petroleum reservoirs Burial in saline aquifers Disposal in Basalt Disposal in deep ocean Disposal in lakes beneath ice caps Mineralization of Magnesium rich rocks Disposal in seafloor basalts Global Gardening Plant an area the size of France and Germany Plant biomass eg timber Allow a quarter century of growth This volume and timescale could return atmosphere to pre industrial CO2 levels Vision an array of plantations supplying commodities such as energy and timber as well as a livelihood for countless communities Criticism Some scientists question whether biomass planting on this scale is a dream or a nightmare Questions remain surrounding crop choice and productivity implementation and land use Nature v 456 November 2008 Known stationary CO2 sources Locations of deep saline formations Sequester from 920 3400 billion Blue electricity
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