Students share tips around the world
Malcolm Gorrill
Northern News Services
Inuvik (Mar 30/01) - Samuel Hearne students will soon share science tips with others around the world.
The school now has the equipment necessary to take part in the Globe program, which centres around an interactive Web site, www.globe.gov.
Peter Hardy, Arctic Territories Globe co-ordinator, said environmental data is entered daily by participating schools onto the Web site.
Hardy said the study areas include atmosphere, water, soils, biodiversity and phenology.
"Phenology's how things change with time," Hardy said. "If every year the ducks arrive four or five days earlier, over time you start to realize things are warming up."
Students also learn how to take samples and measurements.
"What the kids actually do is they learn proper science in a fun way."
Hardy said students can enter data and then compare their findings to data from other parts of the world.
He said it's important to train young people here to collect scientific data.
"With climate change this is the area you're going to see big effects first," Hardy said. "I'm not going to stay in the Arctic forever, but I came over here and fell in love with it."
Hardy, who stays at his current job until October, is an environmental educator from Australia. He taught for a year at St. Patrick high school in Yellowknife, after which he accompanied Julian Tomlinson on his Millennium Trek as part of the Trans Canada Relay.
Hardy said that during the trek he met up with Governor General Adrienne Clarkson and asked her to be patron of the Globe program within Canada. Late last year she agreed.
Picked for POPs
Hardy said that Samuel Hearne has recently been picked as the NWT school to take part in a Globe initiative entitled POPs (persistent organic pollutants) in the Arctic project.
The school in Pangnirtung will represent Nunavut in the POPs project, and the school in Old Crow will represent the Yukon.
Teacher Stacy Applejohn will conduct the Globe program at Samuel Hearne.
She said she's just getting familiar with the Web site, and that she'll focus on her Grade 11 and 12 biology and chemistry students.
"The climate data, the weather station that we'll be setting up, we'll be entering data daily for that," Applejohn said. "The soil and land cover and hydrology we'll be doing twice a year."
She said students will go on two field trips, one in spring and one in fall, to gather data.
"They love working outside and working with their hands and camping and getting dirty, so it's a really good program for them."
