Unpacked Content
Scientific and Engineering Practices
Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions
Crosscutting Concepts
Cause and Effect
Knowledge
Students know:
- The types and uses of natural water resources.
- Structure of a watershed and its functions through time.
- Strategies for water management and conservation.
- Sources of freshwater and ocean water pollution.
- Legislation that addresses the protection of natural water resources.
- Methods of water treatment.
Skills
Students are able to:
- Identify sources of point and nonpoint contamination.
- Identify natural water resources and factors that affect them.
- Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information on the properties, uses, and pollutants of natural water resources.
- Analyze and interpret data to evaluate water resources and EPA standard limits.
- Make a quantitative or qualitative claim regarding the relationship between a natural water resource and a factor that negatively impacts its use/function.
- Investigate and assess the health of natural water resources.
- Design or refine a solution to protect natural water resources, based on scientific knowledge, student-generated sources of evidence, prioritized criteria, and trade-off considerations.
- Identify costs, safety, aesthetics, reliability, cultural and environmental impacts of proposed solution.
Understanding
Students understand that:
- Resource availability has guided the development of human society.
- Scientists and engineers can develop technologies that produce less pollution and waste and that preclude ecosystem degradation.
- When evaluating solutions, cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics must be taken into consideration, as well as any social, cultural, and environmental impacts.
- The sustainability of human societies and the biodiversity that supports them requires responsible management of natural resources.
Vocabulary
- bioassessment
- water conservation
- water treatment
- eutrophication
- industrial effluents
- agricultural runoff
- point pollution
- nonpoint pollution
- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
- EPA Safe Drinking Water Act
- Clean Water Act
- hydrological cycle
- watershed
- free and total chlorine
- total hardness
- pH
- total alkalinity
- nitrate
- nitrite
- contaminant
- aquifer
- surface water
- groundwater
- permeability
- recharge zone
- potable
- pathogens
- water management
- dam
- reservoir
- heavy metals
- wastewater
- desalination
- water table
- industrial waste
- sludge
- phytoremediation
- mechanical treatment - precipitators, scrubbers, trickling filters, flocculation
- sedimentation
- suspended solids
