Culvert Curriculum

This curriculum supports a scientist-teacher-student partnership investigating investigating the effects of culverts on stream ecology.

The overall goals of this curriculum are to support:

• Teaching of science as a process that involves inquiry and reasoning
• Integration of data literacy into the teaching of science
• Understanding of place-specific effects on natural cycles and systems
• Understanding of habitat connectivity as a guiding conservation principle
• Application of scientific essentials, such as habitat needs and energy transfer, to real world research

Target audience:

Upper level high school teachers and their students- chemistry, ecology, environmental science, AP courses.

Total instructional time:

Based on our Mercury in Watersheds curriculum teachers can expect to spend between 15 and 30 instructional periods on this project. This span takes into account the course, teacher and student motivation, and other curriculum demands. (Note: Some teachers have conducted the Mercury in Watersheds project in as little as two weeks (10 instructional periods- this is not recommended.)

Curriculum Layout:

Although research is an iterative process, the school year is not and therefore this curriculum is linear.  The curriculum follows a sequence from question development through sharing research results, including the following Units:

• Developing  background understanding
• Refining and enriching background understanding
• Asking questions, proposing hypotheses
• Field sampling for hypothesis support
• Data analysis
• Sharing research

Culverts form barriers to movement of many wild animals, including fish (Schaefer, 2003). Culverts can impede fish movement through a variety of mechanisms- creating an insurmountable drop or leap to the fish (also known as a perched culvert); reducing water flow; increasing velocity; accumulating debris; or by simply being behaviorally unsavory to the fish species. The reaches of habitat made inaccessible by culverts may be critical to the life cycle of the fish, and without accessibility the fish species may be extirpated from an entire system (Jackson 2003, see also: ).

The effects of culverts, individually or cumulatively, on stream macroinvertebrate assemblages are relatively unknown.  Yet, as primary consumers, they serve a vital role for the health of stream systems--linking the energy from leaf litter and stream algae to higher trophic levels, such as fish (Merritt and Cummins 1996) and terrestrial organisms.

The few studies conducted on macroinvertebrates and culverts have shown that-

• Culverts affect upstream movement of adult, egg-laying caddisflies, and abundances of caddisflies above culverts are diminished (Blakely et al. 2006);
• Adult stoneflies flying patterns are disrupted (Kjeldsen, 1991);
• Certain rock-clinging taxa showed culvert-related shifts in abundance (Khan and Colbo, 2008);
• Native crayfish are limited in their upstream movement, whereas non-native species are not as limited (Foster and Keller, 2011);
• There are some culvert-related community assemblage differences in bottomland, forested swamps (King, Nunnery and Richardson, 2000).

Our central question is: How do culverts affect stream macroinvertebrate community assemblages in coastal watersheds in Maine?

Overview

In order for the students to develop a model (mental or otherwise) to frame their questions and develop hypotheses about streams as systems, we need to employ what students already know and build their background understanding of streams as systems to give them the framework for their own models.

Classroom Activities

An Introduction to Stream Ecology (essential)

This activity introduces stream ecology. Students watch a brief video and interpret that video into a drawing to explain, “How does a stream work?”

Habitat Connectivity (essential)

Students watch two brief videos and discuss the idea of habitat connectivity.

Overview

In this second Unit of the Culverts and Stream Ecology curriculum you will be introducing your students to stream macroinvertebrates and their habitat requirements.

Classroom Activities

Stream Invertebrates (essential)

Students research stream macroinvertebrates and develop a class aquatic foodweb.

Culverts (optional)

Students work with time series data to understand the seasonal changes in water flow through the watershed. This activity helps to plan the schedule for field sampling at your site.

The Stream Environment (optional)

Students connect environmental conditions in the stream to habitat preferences of different macroinvertebrates.

Overview

This unit takes students from examining their models through sharing and peer reviewing  scientific claims. First, students must reflect on their view of the system in which they are working. The students then pose questions about the system and assert a claim about the way they think the system works.  Optionally, the students share claims with, and peer-review claims from, students from different schools.

Classroom Activities

Research Questions and Hypotheses (essential)

A brainstorming activity to explore student understandings of the system that they are studying.

Peer Review (optional)

In-class structured constructive criticism.

Scientific Claim Proposal Video (optional)

Students present their claims to students in other schools via video.

Scientific Video Claims Review (optional)

Students then review each other’s videos and provide feedback.

Overview

Tied tightly with the previous Unit the students must develop a general approach for a research project that will help them support their claim.

Classroom Activities

Experimental Design (essential)

The guiding question for this activity is: How will you go about collecting evidence to support or refute your hypothesis?

Preparing for Sampling (essential)

This activity prepares the class for the field sampling. Or, as one teacher put it: Prior preparation prevents poor performance. (The British Army puts it more colorfully)

Environmental Sampling (essential)

Takes the class out to their field site collect information about the watershed, weather and collect water samples for nitrogen analysis.

Sample Submission (essential)

Guidance for successful classroom-lab interaction and sample submission.

Overview

It is a toss-up whether hypothesis development or data analysis is the more challenging aspect of the research process. Regardless, the material in this Unit is extremely challenging.  This Unit begins with data literacy skill building then proceeds to data organization before concluding with data presentation and determining support or non-support for the students’ claim.

Classroom Activities

(essential)

Skill building exercises for working with environmental data.

Data organization (essential)

In order to make sense of the data and get any meaning from it, it will be necessary (and most efficient) to have the data all together and organized. The goal of this activity is to get all of the data together in one spreadsheet or table.

Presenting the data (essential)

This activity will produce the information students need to determine whether their hypothesis was supported or not. Students will calculate basic descriptive statistics and then will analyze the data using three basic principles: whether two things are related (correlation), whether groups of things are different, and whether things are changing through time. Which technique is used depends in part on the data and the research question. The primary goal is for students to produce meaningful graphs depicting results, and to interpret the results to judge whether the hypothesis was supported or not.

Data Interpretation (essential)

The outcomes of this activity can be simple: a statement addressing whether or not the hypothesis was supported, and a few statements or bullet points discussing why or why not.

Overview

In this unit, students will learn how to produce meaningful posters and make oral presentations to communicate the results of their research project. The poster presentation is a capstone event and is essential to the project.

Classroom Activities

Outlining the Project (essential)

In this activity students get together all of the information they need to begin authoring a poster – notes, reports from other activities, data, graphs, etc. Then students think through the ‘storyline’ of their project and outline the elements that will be on the poster.

(essential)

The goal of this activity is for students to get all of the pieces together and put together their posters.

Presenting your Research (essential)

The goal of making an oral presentation is to quickly summarize the research and allow others to ask questions of the student research team. Students should be thinking about their ‘take home message’ – the most important finding of their work – and be sure it’s clear to the audience.

Peer Review (this activity is discussed in Presenting a Poster)

At the poster session students ‘interview’ and provide written feedback on other students’ posters and oral presentations.

This curriculum will only become better with constant input and feedback from scientists, teachers and students working together, reflecting on the project and its parts and reporting their thoughts and comments.

Barbour, M.T., J. Gerritsen, B.D. Snyder, and J.B. Stribling. 1999. Rapid Bioassessment Protocols for Use in Streams and Wadeable Rivers: Periphyton, Benthic Macroinvertebrates and Fish, Second Edition. EPA 841-B-99-002. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Office of Water; Washington, D.C.

Blakely, T.J, J.S. Harding, A. R. McIntosh, M.J. Winterbourn. 2006. Barriers to the recovery of aquatic insect communities in urban streams. Freshwater Biology. 51:1634–1645.

Ely, D.T. and Wallace, J.B. 2010. Long-term functional group recovery of lotic macroinvertebrates from logging disturbance. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. 67(7): 1126-1134.

Finkenbine, J. K., Atwater, J. W., Mavinic D. S. 2000. Stream Health After Urbanization. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 35:1149-1160.

Foster, H.R. , T.A. Keller. 2011. Flow in culverts as a potential mechanism of stream fragmentation for native and nonindigenous crayfish species. Journal of the North American Benthological Society30(4): 1129-1137.

Jackson, S.D. 2003. Ecological Considerations in the Design of River and Stream Crossings. In: 2003 Proceedings of the International Conference on Ecology and Transportation, edited by C. Leroy Irwin, Paul Garrett, and K.P. McDermott. Raleigh, NC: Center for Transportation and the Environment, North Carolina State University. 10 pp.

Khan, B., M.H. Colbo. 2008. The impact of physical disturbance on stream communities: lessons from road culverts. Hydrobiologia.600:229–235.

King, R.L.,K.T. Nunnery, C.J. Richardson. 2000. Macroinvertebrate assemblage response to highway crossings in forested wetlands: implications for biological assessment. Wetlands Ecology and Management. 8(4): 243-256.

Kjeldsen. .L. 1991. Flying patterns of stoneflies (Plecoptera) at culverts and concrete pipes. Natura Jutlandica.23(4):45-56

Lammert, M. and J.D. Allan. 1999. Assessing biotic intergrity of streams: Effects of scale in measuring the influence of Land Use/Cover and Habitat Stucture on Fish and Macroinvertebrates. Environmental Management.  23(2): 257-270.

Merritt, R. W., Cummins, K. W. 1996. An Introduction to the Aquatic Insects of North America. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Dubuque, Iowa.

Schaefer, F.J.E. Marsh-Matthews, D.E. Spooner, K.B. Gido & W.J. Matthews. 2003. Effects of barriers and thermal refugia on local movement of the threatened leopard darter, Percina pantherina. Environmental Biology of Fishes. 66:391–400.

Pond, G. J., 2010. Patterns of Ephemeroptera taxa loss in Appalachian headwater streams (Kentucky, USA). Hydrobiologia 641: 185–201.

Pond, G.J. 2012 (online 2011). Biodiversity loss in Appalachian headwater streams (Kentucky, USA): Plecoptera and Trichoptera communities. Hydrobiologia. 679:97–117.