June 5, 2010
The brown pelican has become the "poster bird" of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster in the Gulf. 29 oil-covered pelicans were airlifted from Queen Bess Island to a bird rehabilitation center in Fort Jackson on Thursday. This rookery was designed as a protected home where pelicans could live and breed, but it’s now surrounded by oil-soaked booms.
The tragedy is that the brown pelican, once so common on the Louisiana coastline that they are on the Louisiana State flag, has been threatened once before. In fact, the long-billed birds nearly became extinct in the 1960s due to widespread use of pesticides like DDT. The ingestion of these pesticides caused the shells of pelican eggs to become paper thin, so brittle that the eggs cracked when the adult pelican sat on them. Fortunately, the use of these pesticides was banned nationwide in 1972, and a successful program to save the brown pelican from extinction was launched. The pelicans were reintroduced in three locations, including Queen Bess Island, off the Louisiana coast, and were living proof that a species brought to the edge of extinction could come back and thrive. Now their very survival is threatened once again.
For readers who live in Louisiana and want to get involved in helping to save the wetlands and the wildlife, a good source to contact is the Barataria Terrebonne National Estatuary Program (BTNEP). They are front line defenders of Louisiana’s precious wetlands from the potential impacts of the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, and they are looking for volunteers.
Photo Credit: Win McNamee / Getty Images
Posted by: Liz Nealon
June 5, 2010
The NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association) website is a good source for tracking the spill with your students. The site is full of valuable information, particularly satellite photos of the scene.
Still, explaining vast numbers and distances to kids can be difficult. The bigger the numbers, the less they mean. That’s why I often use analogies (e.g. if Earth is the size of a basketball then the Sun would be the size of an entire basketball court) to explain outsized concepts to kids.
There is a great source online to help kids understand the size of the ever-expanding oil spill in the Gulf. If It Was My Home is a simple site that uses Google Maps to place the footprint of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill over a map of your own city or town. It is sobering, and definitely helped me to understand the magnitude of the slick.
Type in your own zip code and try it for yourself. It really brings the sickening sense of urgency to life.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
June 3, 2010
This Saturday, June 5 is National Trails Day - which all of us who love to hike commemorate by visiting favorite trails and participating in educational exhibits, trail dedications, gear demonstrations, instructional workshops and trail work projects. Click here for the National Trails Day website, which has a searchable map so that you can find an event in your area. Celebrate the outdoors with a kid whom you love!
Posted by: Liz Nealon
June 2, 2010
This photograph was taken last week at the KidWind Challenge, sponsored by the American Wind Energy Association. Middle and High School students were challenged to design, build and test their wind turbine blades in a professional wind tunnel with live data monitoring software recording their turbine power output.
If you are an educator interested in innovative energy education, check out The KidWind Project for information about tools, training programs and workshops on wind power for students of all ages.
Who knows, one of these young entrepreneurs might lead the next energy revolution!
Posted by: Liz Nealon
June 2, 2010
ENVIRONMENTAL VACATION OUTING
If your family is vacationing this summer in California, take a side trip to see the Tehachapi Wind Farm, outside Bakersfield. While we all tend to think about renewable energies like solar power and wind power as technologies of the future, Tehachapi is online and producing over 800 million kilowatt-hours of electricity every year.
Tehachapi is the second largest wind farm in the world, with nearly 5,000 wind turbines that generate enough electricity to meet the residential needs of 350,000 Californians every year.
A prime location for viewing the turbines is off of State Route 58 and from Tehachapi-Willow Springs Road. Or, if you want to wander further afield, Paul Gipe of Wind-Works.org has posted this self-guided tour to the entire Tehachapi Wind Farm.
I didn’t know about Tehachapi Pass until recently when I saw a photograph on the blog of a friend of mine. She has taken a five-month sabbatical from her media job in New York City to hike the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail - it’s a 2,656 mile (4,274km) walk from Mexico to Canada. If you’re an environmentalist, you’ll love this blog, called O-Ten. On Foot. The photos that she posts nearly every day capture the incredible resources that make up the Western United States - resources worthy of our protection.
Posted by: Liz Nealon
June 1, 2010
A fourth-grader wrote asking what she can do about the Gulf oil spill.
My name is Alana and I am a 4th grade student. We are currently reading the story you wrote "Wildfires." I think it is a great story. It helped us understand the positive effects that controlled wildfires can have.Although I greatly enjoyed the story, unfortunately that is not the main reason I am writing to you today. I just read your posting on the Gulf Oil Spill. My mom and I have been following the updates. It breaks my heart that this has happened. The sea turtles are one of my very favorite animals on the planet, but I love all marine life. I was even looking into becoming a Marine Biologist when I grow up. I love science and enjoy working with animals. I can’t believe what is going to happen the Gulf’s ecosystem. I know that I am very far away and that I am only 9 years old (almost 10) 
but do you have any suggestions of what I can do to help the situation? It makes me so angry but also sad that this has happened and the only thing that will help me feel a little better is to know that I am doing whatever I can to help save the animals that are still left. Do you think that the sea turtles will survive this disaster? So many have already died. : ( I know you are very busy. Thank you for taking the time to read posting.
Sincerely,
Alana G.
"Science Rules"
Alana, thank you so much for writing and for caring so much about the sea turtles. Like you, I have always considered sea turtles to be one of my favorite animals on our planet. They travel long distances during their lives and return to the same place they were born, where the females lay their eggs for a new generation of turtles. It is so sad that the turtles are being killed by the terrible oil spill in the Gulf. The turtles are only one of the many animals that are being affected and no one seems to know how to put a quick stop to the oil pouring out into the sea. I wish I could tell you what to do to help the situation. More than that I wish I could tell you that someone knows what to do. It seems as if the oil spill will continue for weeks and months and I just hope that the company that caused the spill and the goverrnment can control it by the end of the summer. Perhaps the best thing you and everyone else can do is to try to make sure that it never happens again. There are many conservation groups, such as The Nature Conservancy and The Natural Resources Defense Council that are working to make oil drilling safer in a variety of ways.
The peoples of this country and of other countries all share the same planet. The more people who feel the way you and I do about this terrible situation, the more likely it is that the countries of the world will put rules in place to prevent it from ever happening again.Think environmentally all your life, no matter what you decide to do as an adult. Talk about it to your friends. Read about it in books and on the web. Remain committed to the idea that it’s OUR planet and we need to protect it from being abused. I wish...
read morePosted by: Seymour Simon
May 28, 2010
I came upon a lovely scene while driving on this pre-Memorial Day afternoon.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
May 28, 2010
While working on the Teacher Guide for Seymour’s upcoming book, TROPICAL RAINFORESTS, we came across this US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data on the effects of deforestation on average surface temperatures. Two 100-year simulations were carried out with CFS (Climate Forecasting System): 1) a current climate control simulation {CONTROL} and 2) a deforestation simulation {DEFOREST} in which tropical rainforest in the Amazon region was replaced with perennial ground cover.
The results suggest that the impact of Amazon deforestation would be a warmer and drier Amazon, as well as a warmer tropical Pacific and tropical North Atlantic, with the caveat that CFS is not specifically designed for long climate change simulations.
If you are interested in more detail about this study and others like it, you can find it here: Climate Test Bed Joint Seminar Series.
Deforestation and other words related to life in the Tropical Rainforest, such as Canopy, Emergent Layer, Epiphyte and Understory, are all defined for children in Seymour’s online Science Dictionary. As each new book comes out, we will be adding all relevant terms, with images, to this digital information source for kids. This is all free content, so please introduce it to any children you know who are interested in learning more about the amazing world around them.
Posted by: Liz Nealon
May 28, 2010
We’ve written before about "The Tech Challenge," the annual team design challenge for grades 5 through 12 run by The Tech Museum in Silicon Valley. Teams who enter must use the scientific process to design a hands-on project intended to solve a real-world problem. This year’s topic was "Ridding the Universe of Space Junk," described as follows: You and your team need to design and build a solution that can help rid the Universe of Space Junk one item at a time from the deck of your temporary home - The International Space Station.
CLICK HERE to see a 5-minute video from April’s final competition - with teams of kids trying to get a simulated "inoperative satellite" to burn up on delivery by attaching two Hall Thrusters to its thruster docking ports. Size D batteries were used to represent the thrusters. Looks like it was a fun - and challenging - day!
If your family is traveling in the Southern California area this summer, this museum is full of hands-on fun for kids of all ages. Well worth a stop.
Posted by: Liz Nealon
May 26, 2010
We’ve been writing a lot this month about the work we are doing to develop free, downloadable TEACHER GUIDES to go with all 26 of Seymour’s Collins/Smithsonian books (plus some other perennial favorites like ANIMALS NOBODY LOVES, EARTH, THE MOON, THE PAPER AIRPLANE BOOK, etc).
One of the nice features at the start of each Guide is a brief piece of first person writing from Seymour entitled "Why I Wrote This Book." It’s designed for teachers or parents to read aloud with kids before starting to talk about the book together. Today we are working on the Guide to accompany DOGS. Here is a preview of what Seymour wrote about the genesis of this book.
My first dog was a Springer Spaniel named Nova. Nova means "a new star" and that’s what NOVA was: a new star in our family. Then my son Mike got a dog and he named it Riley (who was then the coach of the New York Knicks). He eventually got another dog named Dizzy (you can guess why) and I dedicated this book to all three (but I misspelled the name of one of my son’s dogs-check the dedication to see which one).
We have completed a prototype Teacher Guide - for EARTHQUAKES - and are currently testing it in classrooms. If you would like to give us your feedback you can download a copy by clicking on this link. We would love to hear from you!
Posted by: Liz Nealon
