TeacherWS2015

Teacher Workshop on River Dynamics and Vegetation in the Arid West, August 10th, 2015

Introduction

CIRES and CSDMS jointly teach a Teacher Workshop on Earth-Surface Dynamics, designed to engage K6-12 science teachers in a focused topic in Earth-surface dynamics.

The topic of the 2015 Teacher Workshop will be River Dynamics and Vegetation in the Arid West. We will show laboratory experiments and findings from fieldwork and introduce research using numerical modeling experiments. This workshop is geared toward secondary science teachers, with application to curriculum in earth science, physics and biology, but are open to all K-12 teachers.

Topic

CU researchers, Greg Tucker, Irina Overeem and Mariela Perignon, will share insights on river processes in the Western US. Educators will learn more about the physics of water flow and sedimentation processes. We will use the Rio Puerco, New Mexico, to illustrate how river morphology rapidly changed with the introduction of the invasive tree species Tamarisk in the 1920s. At the turn of the 20th century the relatively small Rio Puerco delivered large amounts of sediment to the Rio Grande in New Mexico and threatened to rapidly decrease the lifetime of Elephant Butte Reservoir. Elephant Butte Reservoir provides New Mexico and Texas with critical storage of Rio Grande water for agricultural use. Scientist and engineers at the time proposed vegetation measures to manage the rapid erosion in the Rio Puerco channel and thus reduce the sediment load being drained into the Rio Grande. More recently, invasive species have been recognized as a threat to the natural floodplain ecosystem in the West. Large floods occurred in 2006 and again in 2013 (coincident with the floods in the Front Range of Colorado). Efforts to destroy Tamarisk have led again to dramatic changes in channel geometry and sedimentation during these floods. Thus, the Rio Puerco represents a unique natural experiment in the effects of long-term vegetation change on a dryland river system.

Participants will do hands-on experiments and computer modeling that can be easily used in your own classrooms to learn about river dynamics and vegetation.

A course syllabus is posted here: File:Syllabus RiverVegetationDynamics.pdf

This workshop is intended for approximately 15 participants.
Participants will receive a $50 stipend for full day attendance.
Free lunch is provided.
Participants can separately apply to receive 0.5 credits through the University of Colorado Continuing education Program.

Register here: the Power of Water

Reading for this Course

• Perignon, M. C., G. E. Tucker, E. R. Griffin, and J. M. Friedman (2013), Effects of riparian vegetation on topographic change during a large flood event, Rio Puerco, New Mexico, USA, J. Geophys. Res. Earth Surf., 118, 1193–1209, doi:10.1002/jgrf.20073.