LESSON 1: THE SALTY STUMPER: A GROUNDWATER CASE STUDY Building upon prior knowledge of the water cycle, students explore how groundwater moves and interacts with surface water in a watershed. Using data from a case study in Ottawa County, students consider how both natural characteristics of an aquifer and human activities can affect the quantity and quality of groundwater for human use. Students build models to understand groundwater processes, construct arguments based on evidence for how and why issues of groundwater quantity and quality exist, and evaluate the benefits and constraints of various solutions to these problems. 

 LESSON 2: A MUCKY MYSTERY: A NUTRIENT ENRICHMENT CASE STUDY Students complete a reading about three teens who visit the Saginaw Bay to go swimming and encounter decaying vegetative muck washed up along the shoreline. Students interact with a mystery script and activity prompts that reveal clues as the teens investigate why the beach has so much muck. Students learn about other characters who have a stake in the phenomenon as they uncover the interaction between land use and water quality. Students react to questions and sketch and revise a model that reflects their discoveries about how multiple causes on land are connected to excess nutrients in the Saginaw Bay.

 LESSON 3: ROUGE RIVER WATERSHED Students create a simple model of a watershed, identify important terminology about watersheds and use an infographic to analyze data from the Rouge River Watershed (RRW). The conclusion of the lesson is an activity to design a stream daylighting project. The project explores the impacts of Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO’s) as well as more comprehensive watershed restoration actions, including habitat restoration and storm water controls. The information from the infographic comes from several reports centered on the Rouge River National Wet Weather Demonstration Project, which was funded by the EPA, state and local governments.

 LESSON 4: THE DISAPPEARING DONUT: AN AQUATIC INVASIVE SPECIES CASE STUDY Students will learn about the invasive species and how they can impact native ecosystems. Using data from university research studies around the phytoplankton levels in Lake Michigan over the last 30 years, students will investigate how many factors combine to play a role in the complex aquatic ecosystem and decide how humans can minimize their impact on the Great Lakes Ecosystem.