- All right. I'd like to welcome everybody to today's National Marine Sanctuary webinar series,
So pleased to have you all joining us this afternoon.
This is a series that is hosted by the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries
and it's a way for us to connect with formal and informal educators and other interested people
to provide you with educational and scientific expertise,
as well as resources and training to support ocean and climate literacy
with your various audiences.
So I wanted to let you know that today's presentation, we're using the go to webinar platform
and during the presentation all attendees will be in listen only mode.
And if you have any questions go ahead and type them into the question box
in your go to webinar control panel as an attendee. It's on the right hand of your screen.
The question box is the same
area that you can let us know if you have any technical issues with audio or anything else.
We'll be monitoring incoming questions and any technical issues
and we'll respond to them as soon as we can.
Excited to let you know that we have nearly 700 direct registrants for today's
Understanding Ocean Acidification webinar.
We've got participants from all over the United States, as you can imagine,
but we also have registrants from countries such as India, Nigeria,
the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Germany, Puerto Rico, Peru, the Philippines, and many more.
So some of those folks are probably going to be watching the recording of today's webinar
and welcome to everybody that's here to learn a little bit more about National Marine Sanctuaries
and ocean acidification.
So this webinar series is a great way for us to reach out to you
to let you know about our underwater treasures.
So each of the dots, these blue dots on this map, represent one of our National Marine Sanctuaries
that is managed by NOAA.
And the triangles are our Marine National Monuments that NOAA also manages.
So we are a system and a network of that encompasses over 600 000 square miles of ocean
and Great Lakes treasures.
And we protect these ocean and Great Lakes treasures for now and for future generations.
And so we're stewards of these underwater parks
and we hope that you will learn a little bit more about them
and understand that they help protect the ocean and Great Lakes.
These National Marine Sanctuaries are set aside oftentimes because they are just full of biodiversity,
but there can be many reasons that National Marine Sanctuaries are designated as such.
In some cases it's because of the cultural or the maritime archaeology
or the heritage of the site, like this shipwreck here.
These underwater parks provide shelter and a safe place, a safe haven,
for many of our endangered animals, such as
this Hawaiian green sea turtle and Hawaiian monk seal
Now within National Marine Sanctuaries, we're mandated to do a number of things
and one of them is to support education,
which our distance learning webinar series is how we're doing this, virtually.
And then we, of course, when it's a pre and a post-COVID world, will continue to do outreach
to bring these underwater treasures to students and teachers and the general public.
We're also mandated to do research,
and monitoring,
and all of this; the education, the outreach, the research, the monitoring, is to protect the resource.
So the the coral reef ecosystems, the kelp ecosystems,
all the plants and animals that are found in these special underwater parks.
And these special ocean places are places that you too can visit.
So like a National Park or a National Forest,
these are places that we hope that you connect to and that you recreate in.
You can kayak,
in many cases you can fish,
snorkel,
scuba dive,
surf,
you can get on a boat and recreate, you can have marine life viewing,
the opportunities are endless.
And we hope that for some of you, you get so inspired by your National Marine Sanctuaries,
that you choose to become a volunteer for one of our sites around the country
and get involved in the conservation and stewardship of these special underwater parks.
So, with that introduction, it's now time to introduce your webinar hosts for today's presentation.
I am Claire Fackler
and I'm the national education liaison and the national volunteer coordinator
for the National Marine Sanctuary system.
And i'm based here in Santa Barbara, California.
We're joined by my co-host Dr. Zac Cannizzo
and he is a visiting climate scientist and climate coordinator for sanctuaries,
as well as the NOAA Climate Program Office.
With that let's get to the main show today. we've got Amy Dean,
who's with the NOAA Office of Education and the NOAA Satellite and Information Service
as a contractor.
She has over 20 years of experience as a science educator.
She's a Masters in marine biology and is absolutely fascinated by the wonderful and bizarre world
of marine invertebrates.
Amy has worked with NOAA for about 15 years.
She currently develops and manages content for NOAA's data in the classroom program,
which you'll be learning about today.
And she, in her spare time, is a full-time teacher of biology and environmental science
for high school students in the San Francisco area.
So with that, welcome, Amy.
We've got quite a few people online
and they're looking forward to hearing from you about ocean and coastal acidification.
- Great. Thank you, Claire. Thank you, Zac.
I'm so pleased to virtually be with all of you today.
And, actually, I'd like to kick it off with some audience polls,
so we can find out a little bit more about each other before we begin.
So with that, I'm going to ask Zac to go ahead and give our first two audience polls.
- [Claire] All right. You should be seeing the quick poll on the screen. The question is who are you?
And go ahead and select let us know if you're an elementary or middle school teacher,
a high school teacher, an informal educator, or a scientist,
or perhaps you don't fit into any of those categories, which is fine, but let us know.
All right. Looks like we've got a good number of respondents here.
All right, Amy, we've got lots of informal educators about a third and a third are scientists.
All right.
And Zac, you want to take this one away?
- [Zac] Sure, will do.
So our next question is:
How familiar are you with emerging with the emerging science of ocean acidification?
Are you extremely familiar, very familiar, somewhat familiar, or not at all familiar?
- [Claire] And just a note, if anyone's having issues with not seeing a poll question,
if you're in full screen mode, you need to actually pop out of full screen mode
to see the quick poll to respond to it.
- [Zac] All right, it looks like we have most people have gone ahead and answered.
So,
we have a large number of people that are somewhat familiar
and a smaller number of people that are very familiar
with a few people who state they're extremely familiar,
and a few that are not at all familiar with the emerging science of ocean acidification.
So with that, I will hand it back to you, Amy.
- All right. Thank you, Zac.
And I should say too that I am not a chemical oceanographer
and I'm not a scientist, not a chemical oceanographer,
But what I really plan to do today with you is to focus on two key questions.
So the first one is what can we learn about acidification using data,
particularly when we're thinking about education.
So we're going to spend a good amount of time looking at data during this webinar.
And two, how might we use the these data and data tools in our own teaching.
So that's the plan
and we're going to explore the data together
using an education module from NOAA Data in the Classroom,
a module on acidification.
So throughout the first bit you'll see me working with the module to show you data,
but we're really not going to talk about the lessons, specifically, until the end.
So let's begin with data.
Even though we're thinking about the ocean, a good place to start in terms of data is the atmosphere.
So does rising CO2 in the atmosphere impact our ocean or how does it?
So I thought i'd take you on a virtual trip,
aren't all of our trips virtual now anyway, right?
to Hawaii.
And this is one of the only places in the world
where we can explore decades of continuous carbon dioxide measurements
from both the air and sea.
And what I'd like to do is take you to the live modules, so we can actually interact with the data.
I'm going to turn off the ocean data, so that we're just looking at the atmospheric CO2.
This is from the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii
and the x-axis shows measurements from 1958 it looks like
out to 2019.
And the y-axis is showing you carbon dioxide in parts per million.
So a measurement of 300 parts per million means that
for every 1 million grams of well-mixed atmospheric gases,
300 grams would be CO2.
So two patterns that you might notice, right?
The first one are the regular short-term fluctuations that you see,
the regular ups and downs.
And the second is the long-term trend showing increasing CO2.
So I'm going to zoom in, so that we only look at 10 years, right here.
And I want to concentrate on the short term pattern for a moment.
So these regular ups and downs that you see are really the result of biology.
As plants begin to photosynthesize in the spring in the summer,
they consume CO2 from the atmosphere. They're drawing it out of the atmosphere.
And this causes a decrease in CO2 levels that begin every year in May.
At least at this location.
Once fall arrives, plants save energy by decreasing photosynthesis
and without photosynthesis the dominant process
is really the exhalation of CO2 by the total ecosystem.
And you can see that on the graph
that CO2 levels really peak in May and they fall again to September
and then they rise again in May.
We'll go back and take a look at the full data set.
Long term, currently, there's been an observed rate of increase of about two parts per million per year
And that rate has been accelerating.
So we're going to go back
and
now,
we're going to add measurements of CO2 from the ocean.
That's the blue line that you can see here.
These data are from a location, north of Oahu, that's been regularly sampled since 1988.
So you can see that's where the actual data starts, here in 1988.
And again if we're looking for patterns you might notice similar short and long term trends.
So let's talk about the key takeaways from these data that we've been looking at.
We've learned that both in the air and in the ocean
there's regular seasonal ups and downs that exist which are caused by living things.
By life, essentially.
The long-term increasing trend in the atmosphere
is caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels
and there's been approximately an increase of 30 percent.
When CO2 increases,
we also can see that the ocean CO2 increases, as well.
Essentially, when we burn fossil fuels and add CO2 gas into the atmosphere,
the partial pressure of CO2 increases in the atmosphere
and if there happens to be a body of water,
like there is in the graphic,
CO2 will diffuse into the water
until the partial pressures are equal between the air and the water.
So just to give you a sense for how much CO2 we're talking about,
I thought I'd show you the results of a global carbon budget study
that was published about five years ago.
So here it is
and we're really talking about adding
approximately nine and a half billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere, each year.
26 percent of that is diffusing into the ocean.
So 26 percent of nine and a half billion has about two and a half billion tons of carbon
that's entering the oceans each year.
So the original question was how does this impact the ocean.
And I want to give folks, before we dive in a little bit deeper, a quick review on ocean chemistry.
Okay.
So when CO2 from the atmosphere
dissolves into the ocean, it can combine with water to become a weak acid,
carbonic acid.
Some carbonic acid can dissociate and split apart into bicarbonate and a hydrogen ion.
And some of that bicarbonate can also dissociate into carbonate and another hydrogen ion.
So, essentially, as we have more CO2 in the ocean, we have more hydrogen ions
and that's really acidity.
So the acidity is the concentration of hydrogen ions in water.
It's expressed on the pH scale, which is a log scale.
And a change in one pH unit,
so let's say we're gonna go from a pH of seven to a pH of six,
that change in one pH unit is really a ten-fold change in hydrogen ions.
So you get ten times more hydrogen ions as you go from a pH of seven to six,
which means that you're increasing the acidity.
The last thing I wanted to mention was what is the pH of the ocean,
at least in pre-industrial times.
It was about 8.16. So slightly alkaline.
So now I'm going to pause for an audience poll.
And what I want you guys to do is use your prior knowledge,
what we just briefly talked about regarding the pH scale,
and predict how much rising CO2 has impacted the pH of ocean water.
So if it was 8.16 in pre-industrial times, what do you think it is now?
- [Zac] All right everyone,
so what do you think? How much has rising CO2 impacted the poa pH of ocean water?
Currently the pH has decreased to: do you think it's 8.1, 7.7, 7.1, or 6.1?
Again, so do you think that the current pH is at 8.1, 7.7, 7.1, or 6.1?
We'll give everyone a minute or so here to answer.
It looks like we have a large number of people who have already thrown their answer in.
- All right. So it looks like most people have answered.
So we're going to go ahead and close the poll.
And it looks like about 35 percent of respondents think that the current pH is 7.7,
with about 25 percent thinking it is either 8.1 or 7.1,
and 15 percent thinking that it is currently at 6.1.
- All right, well thank you, Zac.
Let's go to the data to find out.
Okay, so back to our original graph
and now the graph includes ocean pH data.
It's in green.
You can see it on the secondary y-axis.
The state is also from Hawaii and it starts in 1988.
So since 1988, the pH has declined from about 8.1 to 8.05.
So if you guessed 8.1, that was the closest one.
So that was the correct answer, for those of you that are keeping score.
All right. So,
The takeaways here,
if we were to think back to the value I gave you for pH in pre-industrial times, that was 8.16,
the pH overall has decreased by about 0.11 pH units.
And this doesn't seem like a lot. I know.
But because the pH scale is logarithmic,
it means that the global ocean has become about 30 percent more acidic.
And you can see that here, right?
So this is the change since the industrial revolution
and models project that the pH will actually change by about 0.4 by 2100,
which would mean the oceans would be about 150 percent more acidic.
So more changes to come for our oceans to be sure.
I'm going to pause again.
Now after spending time exploring the data related to ocean acidification,
I want to know how you guys would define the issue.
- [Zac] All right, everyone.
So how do you think what do you think is the best definition for the term "ocean acidification"?
I will say that, unfortunately, we have had one of the answers get cut off a bit,
so I will read them out to you.
The first is is any increase in the acidity of the ocean,
an increase in acidity over an extended period of time,
an increase in acidity from both natural and human causes,
or
a long-term increase in acidity that is caused by CO2 uptake from the atmosphere.
So that last one should read:
a long-term increase in acidity that is caused by CO2 uptake from the atmosphere.
We apologize that it has been caught cut off a little bit.
So please go ahead and tell us
what you think the best definition is for the term "ocean acidification".
So again, that last one has been cut off a bit
and it should read a long-term increase in acidity that is caused by CO2 uptake from the atmosphere.
We apologize that it has been cut off.
All right. It looks like the vast majority of people have answered,
so we will go ahead and share the results.
And we have about 59 percent of people have answered
that the best definition for the term ocean acidification
is a long-term increase in acidity that is caused by CO2 uptake in the app from the atmosphere
and a smaller percentage have answered
an increase in acidity from both human from both natural and human causes,
with a even smaller percentage answering
either an increase in acidity over an extended period of time
or any increase in the acidity of the ocean.
So again about 60 percent of people have answered
a long-term increase in acidity that is caused by CO2 uptake from the atmosphere.
- Good. Thank you, Zac and the majority of you guys indeed got that right.
So I was really looking for the best definition
and in terms of a good definition for ocean acidification,
it's really a long-term increase in acidity
and primarily caused by an uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere.
So that's when people refer to ocean acidification,
that's
that would be that's a good way to describe it.
Acidification is different in different places of the ocean.
So now we're going to explore some data to try and answer the question:
How?
So how is acidification different as we move closer to shore
and essentially closer to our own coastal communities?
So we're going to travel from Hawaii, which is where we just were, to coastal Washington
and we'll investigate whether ocean acidification is occurring in Washington
in the same way that it is in Hawaii.
So I'm going to navigate back to our live interactive module here
and I'm going to orient you to the graph that you're looking at.
So we're looking at ocean pH data.
This is from a mooring that NOAA specific marine environmental lab established
in collaboration with others.
And there's many other moorings that have similar data sets
that you and your students can access,
that might be closer to where you live.
And I'll show you guys where you can find us at the end of the webinar.
The coastal ocean pH graphs from these moorings can definitely be tricky to interpret.
So let me orient you.
This pH data is from 2010
all the way to 2016.
Again, we're off the coast of Washington.
And notice the pH scale here we're going from 7.9 to 8.5.
You probably noticed that the data has large gaps.
The pH sensors on the mooring are removed from maintenance during the winter months
and they're definitely also occasional sensor failures.
But really, I want you to focus not on the long-term trends here,
but on the range of pH values.
Essentially, the size of the big swings in pH that you can see.
And we're going to compare this to the range of values in Hawaii over the same time period.
So let's go back and do it.
Here we go.
So what's the difference in range
and the range of values over the seven year period that we're looking at
for both Hawaii and Washington?
So we'll start with the Hawaii graph.
The upper range is about 8.1. You can see that.
And the lower range is about 8.05.
And then if we move over to the right to look at the data from coastal Washington,
the upper range is about 8.4 and the lower range is about 7.9.
So we're talking about a difference in range that's about tenfold higher in the coastal ocean.
So imagine organisms that live in the coastal ocean
have to be well adapted for these seasonal, large, extreme seasonal changes in pH.
So
let's summarize.
Along the coast, pH is just different.
Extreme variable it's extremely variable day to day, season to season,
and swings anywhere from 7.9 to 8.4 along the coast of Washington,
which is 10 times greater than the range that we saw in Hawaii.
So why is this?
Well, some natural things do contribute to this.
One there's just a lot more life in the coastal ocean
and more biology, which means more biological processes
like the things we've already spoken about .
These impact ocean chemistry.
Upwelling along the West Coast can also play a role and I'll mention that a little bit later.
But also as we move closer to shore, the ocean receives more runoff from land.
Runoff carrying fertilizers, storm water, soaps, animal manure,
and this can result in a load of excess nutrients entering the ocean.
So why is this problematic? What does it have to do with ph, right?
It really causes even more variability in times when the pH swings even lower than normal
or other times when it swings even higher than normal for the coastal ocean.
And so here's how that happens.
The nutrients that run off as fertilizers or wastewater are primarily nitrogen and phosphorus.
These are essential for plants and algae to grow.
They use them to build proteins in DNA,
so when you have nutrients in the water, you can have a lot more growth of algae.
That algae will bloom and essentially die
and then you have decomposers that break it down, and as they do that, they're respiring.
So they're taking in oxygen from the water
and they're emitting or outputting CO2 into the water as they do that,
and you guys know the rest of the story.
So the more CO2 you have in the more in the water, the more acidic it can become.
And again that's,
that's the connection between the excess nutrients
that are coming into the ocean, the coastal ocean,
and the impact that it has on the pH.
So the last takeaway here,
we saw long-term declines in pH in Hawaii
and
I just want to point out that it's tough to identify similar trends here.
Number one, we have less than 10 years of data,
and number two, the high variability makes it a lot more difficult to ID long-term trends,
at least yet.
So it doesn't mean we won't begin to see trends at some point, but we need more data.
So here I'm going to pause for one more audience poll.
So how would you define coastal acidification?
- [Zac] All right, everyone.
So go ahead and give your answer to the question of
what do you think is the best definition for the term "coastal acidification"?
Any increase in the acidity of coastal ocean,
this second answer has been cut off a bit. It should read:
Extreme short-term changes in coastal water chemistry caused by excess nutrient runoff,
the next answer is near shore increases in acidity from both natural and human causes,
and the final possible answer is ocean acidification on steroids.
So again, that second answer should read:
extreme short-term changes in coastal water chemistry caused by excess nutrient runoff.
And the third answer should read:
near-shore increases in acidity from both natural and human causes.
We apologize that they have been cut off a bit.
So go ahead and tell us how you think
what you think is the best definition for the term "coastal acidification".
Again, recognizing that that second answer should read:
extreme short-term changes in coastal water chemistry caused by excess nutrient runoff.
And the third answer should read:
near-shore increases in acidity from both natural and human causes.
All right and it's looking like we have had most people answer,
so I'm going to go ahead and share the answers.
And Amy, it looks like 60 of people have answered
near shore increases in acidity from both human,
nearshore increases in acidity from both human and natural causes.
And then we have about 33 percent of people have answered
extreme short-term changes in coastal water chemistry caused by excess nutrient runoff,
with a small number of people answering the other two answers.
- Great, thank you.
Okay, so i'm glad i asked that question
because, one thing, I want to point out that was similar to our definition of ocean acidification
is when you hear the term acidification,
it's really referring to a connection that humans are having on ocean chemistry.
So
coastal acidification is really something that they're processes that humans are contributing to
that are making the variability of pH more extreme in the coastal environment.
Certainly, the baseline might be changing, as well,
but it's really the nutrients that are being added into the water
are one of the major reasons that contribute to these bigger
more extreme, variability,
variabilities that we're seeing in the coastal ocean.
So that was the correct answer.
And we're going to wrap up our data exploration by asking
how does acidification impact marine life?
So I'm going to pause.
Does anybody think they know what marine organisms shown in the photo?
Go ahead if you think you know.
Type it into the question box
and I'm going to give you a few seconds to do that. So
Do you know what organism is shown in the photo?
- [Zac] We're getting lots of answers coming in.
We have a few people saying oyster larva,
we have pteropod, copa potter, plankton seems to be something that's coming in a few times,
plankton, a lot of people saying plankton,
oysters is being answered a few times, as is pteropods, mollusk bivalve larva.
So a good range of answers with lots of plankton and larvae coming up.
- Great.
Excellent, excellent guesses. Absolutely. So,
you can see it does look like a bivalve on its side right here and indeed that's what it is.
So these are larval pacific oysters that you're looking at.
And we're going to remain in coastal Washington to talk about impacts to these specific oysters.
If you guys aren't from the West Coast,
you may not know but this is big business for the Pacific Northwest.
Yet in the mid 2000s,
larval baby oysters started to die in mass
in shellfish hatcheries along the Pacific Northwest
and the cause was low seawater pH.
This was likely caused by waters that were brought up from the deep
through a process called upwelling.
This is a process that happens along the West Coast of the U.S. and elsewhere.
I'm going to skip over the details of that process though in the interest of time.
But you should know that deep ocean water is naturally more acidic,
but since the oceans become such a large sink for carbon,
the deeper waters have become more acidic, just like the surface waters.
So pulses of these deep acidic waters that rose to the surface
may have caused these die-offs in the hatcheries.
So why did they die?
This has to do with the chemistry of shell building for oysters,
a process that's similar for clams,
for other spelled marine organisms,
even for corals.
And oysters use a form of calcium carbonate to build their shells, called aragonite,
and they get the calcium carbonate directly from the water.
So you can see that if you're looking at the illustration here.
However, when there's more CO2 in the water,
that carbonate, here it is, reacts with water to form bicarbonate.
The result is that there's less carbonate available in the water for shell building.
The acidity of the water places stress on them, too.
So the more hydrogen ions there are.
The acidity increases and they need to spend more time
and energy regulating the chemistry inside of their bodies,
leaving less energy for growth and reproduction.
So the take home here is that, all of this combined
can slow their growth, weaken their shells
and, in extreme cases, particularly for the larval oysters,
it can cause death.
So this is the last graph we're going to look at.
And here's what we're-- here's the question we're going to try to answer:
How are conditions for oysters, now, in the Pacific Northwest?
The story I was telling you was from about 10 years ago.
So how are things today?
And the graph that you're looking at shows something called aragonite saturation state
that describes the tendency for calcium carbonate or aragonite to form or dissolve in seawater.
And for Pacific oysters to survive, they need an aragonite saturation state of about 1.5.
So right about here.
Anything less than that and they can die.
So we're going to call that the survival threshold, and again, that's 1.5.
And for Pacific oysters to grow and build their shells,
they need an aragonite saturation state of about above two.
So right here where the blue line is.
Anything less than that and they might have difficulty growing.
We're going to call this the growth threshold and again that's 2.0.
Okay, so I'm going to take you one more time to our live online module
and again we're looking at the same graph.
This is aragonite saturation state conditions in Washington from month to month.
And the data is summarized in a box plot.
So for all of you teachers out there, your students likely have seen these types of graphs
in middle and high school, in college if they're taking a stats class,
but um for the rest of us, you it may have been some time since you've seen a plot like this.
So
let's just spend a moment talking about it.
So what is a box plot show?
Imagine if we had hundreds of data observations from January on aragonite saturation state.
The box shows the middle 50 percent of those data observations.
The line in the middle of the box, or the line in the box, shows the median.
The line and the dots on the top are the upper 25 percent of the data
and the line down below is the bottom 25 percent of the data.
Okay, so now, let's go back and now we can
hopefully when our plot comes back,
here we go now we can drop drag this threshold line
down to
our threshold F2.
All right.
Having a hard time doing it, but we're close enough.
Okay.
Pie charts,
down below, show us what percentage of the observations for that month
fall below the threshold.
So if we're looking at January,
about 58 percent or 57 percent of all the observations for January
fell below that threshold.
Okay so hopefully what you'll see here is that the conditions in winter
and certainly in the early spring months are not optimal for growth
during certain parts of those months.
Late spring and summer, things are better.
So now let's drag our threshold line down to 1.5
or so
and take a look at the pie charts down below.
What you may notice is that conditions are sometimes lethal for larval oysters,
particularly in the month of March,
and then a little bit also in the months of September, October and December.
Okay. So our take-homes for this final plot that we're looking at,
larval oysters are already experiencing conditions that may cause mortality
during certain times of the year,
Not all the time.
Conditions are not optimal for growth during much larger proportions of the year, though,
meaning that they're likely
needing to devote more time and energy into building their shells.
How does this impact us?
It certainly can have major economic impacts for the shellfish industry.
And according to the scientists I've talked to about this,
we really don't understand yet
the impacts that this will have on larger ecosystems.
So we understand the chemistry but the impacts that this is going to have on the ecosystems
are just not well understood yet.
So finally, what can we do?
I'm just going to say a few words on this,
focused on the science and industry partnerships
between oyster farmers and the broader scientific community.
So NOAA and their partners provide real-time ocean acidification data
that includes pH data to hatcheries
and these function like an early warning system.
So some hatcheries have monitoring stations right at their hatcheries,
along the coast of Washington and Oregon,
and managers can then anticipate the need to buffer or adjust the chemistry of the water
that comes into the hatcheries.
So that's one solution.
Another one is to develop and engineer oysters that are more resistant to the effects of acidification.
So we're going to transition now away from the data
to the education, to talk about how you might use data in your classroom
or your other education activities.
All the data and the data interactives that i just showed you,
and many of the questions we explored too
are part of the module on acidification.
So some of you may or may not be already familiar with the data in the classroom,
but the idea here is to bring data from NOAA to teachers and students
to make it easy and accessible for teachers to use in their classrooms.
We currently have five modules.
You can see what they are right here.
Most were developed for middle school
with the such exception of the acidification module.
However, it really is broadly used by middle high school and college level teachers
across the board, for all of our modules.
All of the modules offer the same resources, including a teacher's guide,
the web-based student activities like the ones you've seen me use throughout this presentation,
and access to the interactive data tools.
And they all have the same pedagogical approach.
So there are five scaled levels of interaction in every module,
beginning with some relatively basic teacher-led discussions and lessons about
how to read and interpret graphs,
and then they built for lessons that challenge students to use what they've learned
to investigate a question of your their own.
So that's what happens in levels four and five.
And when I've used these in my own classroom,
I don't always have time to go through all of the lessons in these modules,
so it is nice that you can jump in at m to any of these levels as standalone lessons.
So this is what the website looks like.
You can see the resources for teachers are accessible here.
And again, there's a detailed teacher's guide for you,
but also there's student worksheets for each level.
And I just want to mention we've just made these worksheets both editable for you
and fillable for your students,
so that you can assign them remotely.
I know that i'm starting the school year next week remotely,
so this is really nice to be able to just push them out
via your google classroom or whatever learning system you use.
Students can fill them out and turn them right back into you online, without the need of a printer.
These and some other updates and improvements will be all accessible via the website
by September 1st.
And then you've seen what the activity looks like
as I've moved through the earlier parts of the webinar,
but all of the online activities are organized the same way.
So there's an introduction tab with a guiding question,
there are five levels of student activities,
and if you're just interested in the data and not the lessons,
or if you want to create your own lessons around around the data tools,
you can access all the data presented through the lesson by clicking on the "get data" tab.
And I mentioned,
there other coastal mooring data places that you can go to around the United States.
The module specifically has data from Hawaii, Washington, and the Gulf of Maine.
But if your other places along the coast of the United States,
you can click here and see what other mooring data is closer to where you are.
All right. And if you're interested in keeping up to date with the webinars updates or anything else
related to data in the classroom,
you can sign up via the website.
And then I have one plug for an additional NOAA education resource on coastal acidification.
It's a great interactive animation for students.
It includes not only some science,
but it also helps to walk students through solutions, as well.
And it's great if you don't have a lot of time to spend on diving into the data.
I'm happy to share this link with the organizers,
so that you can get it after the webinar, if you're interested.
And with that, I'll end and I'm happy to answer any of your questions.
- Excellent. Thank you, Amy.
Greatly appreciate that overview of ocean and coastal acidification.
So we've been getting quite a few great questions coming in.
So I'll kick one off here and Zac and I will take turns.
And I actually just found the link for that animation, so i'll send that out in the box, in a second.
So we have a question here:
Are there areas that are significantly and naturally more acidic than other areas?
- Yes and so one example of that,
and again I'm not an expert, I'll just keep saying that,
but one example of that is areas where there is upwelling.
So the West Coast of the United States is one area
that can episodically have have times with lower pH
compared to other places around different parts of the oceans.
- Thanks, we have a question,
we have another question that came in asking if you can use corals to go back past 1988.
- I'm not sure if i can answer that question.
That's a good question. (laughing)
I've explored the data a lot and
I...
from the data that i could find available and accessible,
the earliest data was from 1988.
- Okay. It looks like there's a question here about what role does coastal upwelling
influence, how does--
what role does coastal upwelling have on influencing ocean acidification?
Right,
so,
the same processes that are influencing the open ocean.
So when we are out in Hawaii looking at those data, right,
the same processes in terms of the coastal waters,
absorbing acting like a sink for carbon dioxide,
that's still happening in the coastal ocean.
The difference between ocean and coastal acidification is,
on top of that issue of atmospheric Co2 being being drawn into our coastal waters,
we have these added coastal processes
that are causing additional swings and extreme variability in pH.
So same processes that are happening out in the open ocean are happening in the coastal ocean,
we just have local drivers that are changing the situation
and making the variability that we already experience in the coastal ocean
just more extreme.
- Thanks we have a two-part question that's come in.
The first asks how is ocean acidification relevant in the life of a 16 year old student?
And then building off of that, the future of ocean pH does not look good.
How can we inspire optimism and hope among students?
- Those are really, really good questions.
So the first one was what is-- how does a 16 year old connect, right, to these issues?
I would say as much as you can connect them to anything local,
anything that they have experience with that's going to be your best bet.
So if you're working with students along the coast,
find something local that's going to-- that they can connect with.
So if you're on the east coast that could be, you know, clams or, you know, other shelled organisms.
If you're down in the South, off the coast of Florida, that could be coral reefs.
So find something local that you can really tie them to,
before you start talking about the issues of itself.
And then,
What can we do?
You know, I draw from great advice and optimism
that I've heard other scientists relay over time.
And that is you can't lose hope,
you have to press forward,
and we've got to do our best, to do what we can do.
So if that has to be looking at engineering,
oysters that can withstand greater changes in pH.
That might be what we have to do.
And then certainly collective actions are, at this point, what's needed
over individual actions.
So encouraging your students to gather together
and organize might be a one way to approach it.
- Yeah, that's a good point.
Collective action. So working with your your school, your local community, your county,
state and kind of just finding ways to roll up that action.
Thank you for that. That's an important note, for sure.
Speaking of, what we're talking about students, but lots of great feedback
about the materials being editable and easy to download and modify,
and have students send back. There's one particular...
Do students have to download, then send into their teacher?
Or can they be submitted from the website to the teacher, directly?
I think I know the answer but I'll let you take them.
- Unfortunately, no, not at this point.
So what you would do as a teacher is you can download the fillable or the editable form,
and then you'll have to post it
let's just say to google classroom and push it out, that way.
- Great. Thank you for the clarification
- We have a question asking about Hawaii a little bit.
Asking if there's also variability between coastal Hawaii and further out in the ocean
and do the reefs around the island make a difference?
- Those are that's a really good question. I cannot speak to that.
I would say, potentially, yes!
Likely impacts running off from the shore, but I don't know.
- Amy, can you tell us a little bit more about some of the other types of organisms that can be impacted
by increased acidity in the ocean?
- Absolutely. So
there's this is another area where there's a lot to learn.
And a big area where we just don't have a lot of information yet.
If animals have to spend more time regulating themselves
and regulating their internal chemistry,
then then they're going to be impacted.
And I think we just don't don't understand the depth and breadth of what that really means,
so there's some studies on sharks and fish related to this.
lots of studies around shelled organisms to be sure.
But it's definitely an emerging field and we have a lot to learn.
- Yeah I guess I've heard at some of the OA symposiums and such that
there's going to be winners and losers.
So there will be species that are impacted,
if they're trying to pull the calcium carbonate from the ocean water
and with the increased acidity there's less of it
for the shell building organisms,
but there may be some organisms that actually
do okay and and possibly even benefit.
But you want to keep things in balance, right? We want the healthy ecosystem as a whole.
- Related to the modules that have been created,
are there any plans to expand the lessons beyond the five that are already available?
- That is a great question.
The answer is yes.
So we have plans in the works now.
We're working on scoping one or two additional modules
or that's what that's been my one of my jobs over the summer,
particularly on weather.
And,
And so these modules, well because i'm a full-time teacher,
I do all of my work for data in the classroom in the summer.
So I would say keep your eyes peeled for new modules coming up next summer.
But certainly not in the next nine months or so.
- Great i did want to share someone typed in a fantastic comment
about when we were talking about the younger students and finding their connection
and how they can have collective action.
Someone mentioned like connecting with businesses and
getting involved with citizen science efforts.
But here's an actual quote from a participant,
saying hope is the active conviction that despair shall never have the last word.
And that's kind of a powerful phrase. So thank you for sharing that.
In terms of additional questions, I guess we have a few more minutes here.
So how do you suggest drawing the connection to the ocean and the environment
when we can't take field trips right now?
I work with many students that have not seen the ocean before.
- Yes, wow.
Well, certainly acidification is happening potentially over any large body of water.
Right, CO2, remember we talked about you know the equilibrium between air and sea.
So I'm not familiar with the data related to this.
Maybe in the Great Lakes area, but it would be something to to look at
to see if you if you're somewhere in the middle of the country
that could be an interesting question.
And otherwise a great opportunity, especially now,
if we're if we're all teaching remotely, or for those of you that are teaching remotely,
is to get a scientist from, or an educator
from the coastal zone somewhere that you're interested in
or somewhere that might have a connection to your students
and bring them into your classroom, remotely.
And have them talk or show you some of the things that are happening on the coast.
- Great. Thank you.
- Keeping along the education and communications line,
we've seen a lot of ways that we can communicate ocean acidification to a student audience.
Are there any ways we can creatively communicate these trends to adult audiences,
who might be a little bit less data savvy,
and maybe had a little bit more time since they've been in school, and seen things like box plots?
- That is an interesting question and I wonder since I,
you know, my job is primarily to work with youth and at the student audience.
I wonder if Claire has any ideas on that one.
- Well now you caught me off guard. Sorry, I was looking at additional questions.
I'm trying to catch where you are Zac.
- So data savvy audiences needing an adult audience.
- Well, you know, there are some neat demonstrations
that normally we would do hands-on to better understand the impacts of ocean acidification.
But in this all virtual world, gosh, that I would just google some short videos
about what is ocean acidification.
And there's lots of great animations and short films out there that that dive into that,
so that if you don't have to look at the data just to get a broad understanding of the issue.
- Yeah. Documentaries are very good.
Are a good one for adult, yeah.
- All right.
Let's see here.
People are super appreciative of your presentation today.
So thank you for that, Amy.
I guess we'll ask one last question and then we'll move on to our wrap-up slides.
I'm not sure this is one you will know,
but do you happen to know if CO2 dissolution is greater at the poles or at the equator?
- I'm guessing it's very much temperature related
there might be other factors and variables at play as well,
but my sense is yes I can't speak with authority to that, though.
- I can actually answer that.
- Oh, thank you!
- (laughing) In general, on average, it is greater at the poles
because it the temperature is colder. However, it is place-based.
There are definitely places in the tropics where dissolution is particularly high,
due to local conditions.
But in general, on average, because it's colder at the poles dissolution is higher at the poles,
which makes places like the Arctic Ocean and the area are in the Southern Ocean around the Antarctic
particularly susceptible to ocean acidification.
- Great. Thank you for sharing that knowledge, Zac,
And Amy, thank you so much for being our guest presenter tonight,
on a very, you know, complicated, scientific, heavy topic of ocean and coastal acidification.
I was kind of noticing that
I think everyone was just enraptured with trying to understand the graphs and the data
and the content that we were getting very little communication in the question box,
until actual Q&A period of time.
So, I think people were definitely absorbing all this great information.
If you want to watch this webinar again,
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So we do have a couple of live events coming up in our series.
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He's going to be talking about unleashing the innovator in every child,
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We greatly appreciate it and this concludes today's webinar.
Thank you very much.