We know that all living things need water to grow and survive - people, poodles, plants, potatoes, pike, pelicans, polar bears, pollinators... okay, you get the point. Not all living things need oxygen, but they all need H2O. So despite the price of gold or the world's quest for uranium or oil, water clearly sits on the throne of precious resources on this "Blue Planet" of ours.
Even though we "share" the planet with millions of other species, it's only us humans that make decisions that can affect the quality of the natural world with environmental impacts. We make those decisions to benefit or hinder the quality of life for particular people and/or communities (social impacts), and/or to provide monetary advantages or disadvantages to specific communities, businesses, and/or people (economic impact). As if that's not challenging enough, many decisions humans make fail to fully consider all the other "citizen lifeforms" that share Planet Earth that are now facing extinction rates thousands of times greater than in prehistoric times. So in the end, humans rarely intentionally "share" with other species the environments that they alter because in the end, "sharing" implies equal rights to available resources.
Many regions in the United States currently face the question of how to sustain profitable agriculture along with water quality and quantity, and Wisconsin is no different. In the Central Sands, farmers and agribusinesses grow crops, some that require irrigation to maintain and to maximize profitability. And many of the agribusinesses there irrigate crops by pumping water from the ground using high capacity wells. High capacity wells can pump 70 or more gallons per minute (DNR 2017).
Humans use these crops for their own consumption, to feed animals, and to produce ethanol. Humans and wildlife also depend on that same water, which supports the numerous streams and lakes in the area. Pumping water decreases the flow of water in streams and the water in lakes, which affects waterfront property owners, fish and wildlife, real estate and property tax values, and tourism. With many different stakeholders depending on this water environmentally, socially, and economically, what decisions can humans make to sustain both agriculture and water? And who establishes the "yardstick" of how to measure who gets how much water and for what?
To really dig into the science and solutions of water resource use, have your teacher download the free Lesson Guide below for hours of peer-driven learning in your classroom with your peeps. You can also learn lots more by reading the advanced information in the Learn More section below by clicking on the icon.
If you're interested in truly becoming a more knowledgeable "sustainable steward" of the Planet, discover the greater sustainable story by watching all 17 parts of the documentary, Searching for Sustainability. You or your teacher can also get the full 68-minute DVD on that website.
Like many valleys across the country, Pleasant Valley, located in Dane County, Wisconsin, contained a stream that over time became degraded to the point of being classified as “impaired”. According to the EPA, this means that, “the river was considered too polluted or otherwise degraded to meet the water quality standards set by states, territories or authorized tribes in the U.S.”
The Pleasant Valley Branch of the river became filled with sediment from agricultural run-off. That sediment also contained large amounts of phosphorous and nitrogen that caused excessive algae and plant growth in the river. Fish and other aquatic species dwindled and the waters officially were listed by the DNR as impaired. Like many streams in agriculturally dominated landscapes, the outlook for the river appeared grim.
However, a new creative partnership between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, The Nature Conservancy, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Dane County Land Conservation Division and local farmers began to reverse the fate of the Pleasant Valley Branch.
Using a variety of science and technology to develop a case study, the stakeholders formed a systematic plan to reduce the ag-induced sediment and phosphorous load degrading the steam. They spoke to those farmers about new farming methods and nutrient plans that would help the stream while also helping them make more money through conservation and efficiency. These strategies included no-till planting, dual crop rotation, contour farming, nutrient management of fertilizers, and better practices of handling of manure.
Over time, the stream scientists, known as hydrologists, noticed significant changes taking place in the health of the stream’s ecosystem. Combined with physical stream bank restoration using rocks to stabilize sediment, these improvements resulted in something few expected to see in just a few years… return of trout to the stream.
To discover the science and partnership dynamics of this entire story, watch the video here plus:
Also, find out more about what you can do to keep your local waters healthy and clean by checking out the website of our educational partners, Wisconsin Land+Water and Project WET. Project WET offers a variety of activities (including one here), games and water education resources for teachers.
Karst topography means a landscape that has underlying limestone as its bedrock where caves, sinkholes, underground rivers, and springs can form. You’ve heard of Mammoth Cave, right? Well, that national park and thousands of other limestone caves around the country we formed because they were located in karst topography. These karst areas also often have direct pathways from the surface down into groundwater aquifers because of how easily water passes through dissolved cracks and channels in the limestone. And why does water pass so easily through this limestone?
It all begins in the clouds. Raindrops that fall from the sky pick up carbon molecules from carbon dioxide in the air as they plummet toward the ground. This combination creates a weak acid known as carbonic acid. Limestone (CaCO3) is a weak base so it reacts with carbonic acid and begins to dissolve along tiny fractures in the rock. Over time, and we’re talking over thousands of years, these cracks get wider to the point where they can actually form massive caves. Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky, is one 400 mile-long example. You can imagine how these caves are underground highways for water. And many of these underground waterways also serve as aquifers for drinking water.
Watch the video to learn more about these methods plus use the classroom lesson activities to learn the skinny on karst non-point source pollution in your region. To "spelunker" you way deeper in the hidden world of karst topography and its environmental implications:
Also, find out more about what you can do to keep your local waters healthy and clean by checking out the website of our educational partner, Wisconsin Land+Water.
When it rains, most people are more concerned about finding their umbrellas or raincoats than what happens to all the water draining from their homes, driveways and yards. Yet stormwater runoff, and the pollutants it often carries into our waterways, remains a significant threat to water quality. Likewise, few people consider where all the wastewater goes when you brush your teeth, take a shower, or flush the toilet. It just magically disappears, right? Sorry, it may be out of sight, but if you care about the environment, it shouldn’t be out of mind.
In many cities such as Milwaukee, the largest city in Wisconsin, they use grey infrastructure to help manage their stormwater and wastewater. Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District has the huge task of handling all that sewage and stormwater and to prevent pollution from the discharge of treated water into nearby Lake Michigan.
So what is this grey infrastructure anyway? It’s easy enough to see their massive sewage treatment facilities that handle the sewage generated throughout the city and 28 municipalities that are part of the District. But where does all that stormwater go when it washes off the streets and buildings and runs down the storm drains?
Watch the video below to get an underground look at how their Deep Tunnel system works 24-7 to prevent untreated sewage from being discharged into Lake Michigan.
Another method of managing stormwater runoff is with green infrastructure. This is where individual homes and businesses employ a variety of methods and technologies to prevent runoff from their properties. Watch the video above and to the right to see a Supa-Green Infrastructure in action.
To really dig deeper into the environmental implications of both grey and green infrastructures in your home or city:
Also, find out more about what you can do to keep your local waters healthy and clean by checking out the website of our educational partner, Wisconsin Land+Water.
Did you ever try to eat an entire apple pie chased with a quart of milk? If so, you how too much of a good thing can create problems. It’s the same with algae.
In many lakes and oceans, algae is an important part of the base of the entire food pyramid in naturally balanced ecosystems. But when algae is artificially over-fertilized in an unbalanced ecosystem, it can create waaaay too much of a good thing. And that can make things go horribly wrong.
Take Tainter Lake for instance. It’s located in northwestern Wisconsin and was once a pristine home to a number of bird, fish, reptile, and amphibian species. But nowadays, an organism known as blue-green algae typically forms a slimy mat over the lake during the summer. It not only stinks and prevents people from recreating on the lake, the toxic algae reportedly causes health problems for the lakeside residents. So what’s happening here?
As you’ll see in the video, our eco-investigator, Caroline, met with residents and scientists to discover how blue-green algae forms cyanobacteria each summer, which in turn, produce toxins. These toxins have caused health problems, such as lupus-like symptoms and hives for some residents.
To understand the causes of this environmental problem, we need to look at the basic chemistry and biology of plant and algae growth. Farmers put un-natural amounts of phosphorous (P) and nitrogen (N) on their fields to grow maximum crop yields. Those plant nutrients are often a combination of commercial fertilizers and animal manure. Unfortunately, rains wash off some of those fertilizers from the landscape and the mix ends up in rivers and lakes.
So the main cause for this toxic algal growth at Tainter Lake is the increasing concentration of “plant nutrients” getting washed into the lake. Phosphorous is one of the biggies, that’s contained in the fertilizers that modern farmers apply on their fields, and is a major chemical component of cow manure. Depending on a number of variables such as slope, rainfall, runoff, concentration, soil attachment, and erosion, both sources of phosphorous and nitrogen can get flushed off fields, into streams, and ultimately into lakes such as Tainter. So these forms of fertilizer that cause field crops to grow also functions the same way in the lake, except that it can cause a massive undesired algal bloom. Though not technically a plant, algae uses the same plant-like process of photosynthesis to grow and thrive. And when all that algae begins to die off, it causes depletion of the oxygen content in the water that can kill off aquatic life, creating a "dead zone". To learn more about how nutrient-induced algae causes hypoxic zones, check out the NOAA link below.
So what’s to be done? Society needs farmers to grow crops, right? Well, for starters farmers can limit how much phosphorous and nitrogen gets washed off their fields in a couple of ways. One is by limiting the amount of fertilizers they use on their crops. This is done through what is called “nutrient management planning”. In short, they only apply what the crops can absorb and use to grow. As you might imagine that depends on a number of technical things and the forces of Mother Nature. Another way to limit phosphorous and nitrogen runoff is by using improved farming techniques that help prevent excess nutrients from leaving the soils and landscape. To learn more how this is done, take a moment and watch the video.
To really “plow into” the science and environmental implications of all this, and ignite the chemistry and biology parts of your brain:
Also, find out more about what you can do to keep your local waters healthy and clean by checking out the website of our educational partner, Wisconsin Land+Water.
Despite how important the refining process is in producing the fuels that feed our society, it’s not worth much if it sits in a huge tank somewhere. It needs to get to the refinery from oil fields and from refineries to distribution systems. And that’s mostly accomplished by building and using pipelines.
It’s a huge task to transport millions of gallons of crude and refined fuels efficiently, safely, and cheaply. Especially since pipelines sometimes travel thousands of miles across all kinds of landscapes and in a wide range of weather conditions.
Crude oil begins its journey from underground where it flows or is pumped to the surface into tanks. From there it’s trucked locally or more often pumped into gathering lines. These small lines typically range from two to eight inches in diameter. They “gather” oil from producing oil fields in places like North Dakota, Texas and Canada. Then it moves through larger pipelines that stretch for hundreds, and sometimes thousands of miles. These larger pipelines, known as trunk lines, have a diameter of eight to twenty-four inches (about the diameter of a tree trunk) and connect regional markets. Believe it or not, there are over 55,000 miles of trunk lines in the U.S. alone.
The other type of pipeline used is called a refined product pipeline. Not surprisingly, this type of pipeline carries refined products from a refinery to either storage containers or directly to facilities like airports, industrial plants, or power plants. If refined products end their pipeline journey at a storage tank, tanker trucks carry them the last few miles to their final destination – like your local gas station.
Take a moment to guess two ways that crude and refined products flow through pipelines? (Hint – feel your heartbeat) Now consider the physics involved. Discover the rest of the pipeline story by watching the video and reading the advanced information in the "Learn More" section below. Just click on the icon. Also, check the link to our educational partner here to learn more about pipelines.
Sometimes, we think that the food we eat just pops out of the ground or appears magically at our supermarkets, but the truth is much different. Jacob and Gianna, our hosts, quickly discover that a huge amount of work goes into growing soybeans, and that the most sustainable ways of doing things are not always the easiest. That being said, it does not take long for them to learn that sustainable practices often equate with financial success for farmers and others in the soybean industry.
Sustainability has three pillars: environmental, economic, and social. Each is equally important, and they combine to paint a bright picture for the future of the soybean industry. The hosts enlist the help of Cedric in mission control and Coolbean, a smart soybean with an ego to match, to find the base of each pillar and get the big picture of what these pillars support.
The hosts start their journey into soybean sustainability from the ground up…literally. A farmer explains the sustainable practices he uses on his farm and a soil scientist describes the process of soil testing. Why would scientists go through the trouble of digging up dirt all over a soybean farm? And what scientific process makes soybeans one of the best crops to grow in the Midwest? The hosts, and experts that they speak to, will help you answer those questions and many others.
All this sustainability stuff may seem like a lot of extra work and, well, it is. As another farmer explains, however, this extra work results in extra income for the farmer. How else are sustainable practices involved with soybean economics? The hosts wonder what happens after soybeans leave the farm and quickly realize that sustainability plays a part in the transport of soybeans as well. A grain distributor highlights how a cooperative saves farmers from driving hundreds of miles while a lock-master (huh, what’s that?) describes barge transport. It turns out that one barge traveling down the Mississippi River contains as many soybeans as 58 trucks. Whoa.
Ok, so soybeans benefit the environment and farmers, but aren’t there three pillars of sustainability? What about social sustainability? A farmer walks the hosts through her family farm that benefits the environment, economy, and her community all at the same time. Next, a nearby town beckons. Two kind community members tell the story of how Evansville, Wisconsin became the “Soybean Capital" of the state. Finally, they learn about a group of farmers that work together to minimize erosion from their farms into the watershed of Madison, Wisconsin. Here are three different methods with one common goal.
Sustainability has not always been the top priority of the soybean industry. One of the experts the hosts speak to was instrumental in developing the National Soybean Sustainability Initiative. This tests how sustainable farmers and others in the industry are being, and provides them with ideas on how to do even more in the future. This came at a perfect time, as the hosts realize by talking to an employee at The DeLong Company. These days, soybean buyers all around the world demand soybeans produced sustainably. The market must meet this demand but the push towards being more sustainable has benefitted the industry tremendously and the hosts find out why. You will too as you watch this episode. Just promise that you won’t be a know-it-all like Coolbean....
Life lesson here. What's the impact on the planet and society when a user of natural resources only takes resources for profit and fails to reinvest in restoring what they've impacted? Everyone loses. The planet, society, ecosystems and even the company end up being losers. What's the solution? For an industrial sand mining operation it begins with a comprehensive environmental study that becomes part of their mine reclamation plan that should consider all the abiotic and biotic factors that may be impacted by mining.
When done right, a mining operation is actively going through several stages of evolution and transformation. At Tunnel City, Wisconsin for instance, they didn't simply come in and bulldoze off the overburden from the entire area so they could scoop up all the quality sand and leave a giant gaping hole in the ground. No, that would be totally wrong for the environment and nearby communities. Instead, they mine across the landscape by mining sand in one smaller area while restoring previously mined sections in different areas at the same time. So they're essentially reclaiming and restoring some areas while they're also mining the sand from new ones. The end result is that there's less total cumulative impact on the greater landscape and the various species that live there.
We can imagine how a white-tailed deer or wild turkey could easily flee the advance of mining in a certain area and return months or years later when the area was restored. But what about special species that depend on a key part of the environment, or what if a species is special or endangered? That too is part of a proper environmental study that's incorporated into the restoration plan. Watch the video here and read more in the "Learn More" section below to discover how certain species deserve special attention during planning and restoration.
Be sure to explore these other related serious science videos and their companion lesson activities on industrial sand mining, with your teachers and fellow students for some fun interactive peer learning.
The educational partner listed below supported the science video content you see here. Visit their page to learn more about their sand mining operations.
Their secret to using a thousand times more fresh water every day than they pump from the ground is based on the 3 R's of sustainability that you've likely learned from some of our previous videos and lessons. Remember? They are: 1)Reuse, 2)Reduce, 3)Recycle.
Though this sand mine employs all three R's in their process, recycling is the biggie. And boy is it BIG. Just watch the video to get a sense of the massive water filtration and recycling plant that uses several very cool technological phases to turn thick, muddy soup into water that looks clean enough to drink. No joke.
Even with their recycling system, they still needed to perform a "hydrologic study" to determine that their intended water demands wouldn't adversely affect the water table - you know, the ground water in the aquifer that the area depends on for their fresh water supplies. In rural areas, such as this, most residents get their water from personal water wells on their property. It makes sense that an industry can't simply come in a pump all the water they want without regard for the impact on the local aquifer. To learn more about hydrologic studies and ground water, dive into the classroom learning offered in our free lesson plans below.
Also, click on the Learn More tab below to discover some of the parts of a "mine reclamation plan" and how it affects the landscape and ecosystems.
Ah, so you already "know" that mining and using frac sand, or "industrial sand", is a bad deal, right? Before you answer, consider where you learned that. You may have formed your opinion from biased sources that presented a negative image because it made for more controversial news or supported a particular perspective. A skewed perspective can sometimes speak in a stronger voice than factual science.
That's why we want you to become real scientists here by forming your own conclusions based on the facts that you discover. That is an important part of the scientific process. Do your own independent research such as digging into the science here, the links at the bottom of this page, and within other recent scientific studies and different online sources. You may be surprised by what you uncover.
The chemistry and geology of industrial sand in the Upper Midwest is relatively simple and very ancient. Sand is made up primarily of quartz. It's silica, or SiO2. It's the most common silica crystal and the second most common mineral on the earth. And because of its chemical and physical properties, it's key in making many of things that make our modern lives possible. Rather than simply tell you, watch the video above to get a better idea. Doing your own online research will reveal even more uses.
But why mine industrial sand when deserts and beaches are covered with tons of sand? The answer is that different kinds of sand have different chemical and physical properties. To be classified as industrial sand, the sand source needs to contain a large percentage of very pure silica sand, with uniform grain size and clean, well-rounded grains. The silicon-oxygen atoms that make up pure silica quartz form one of nature’s hardest minerals. One of the geologic factors that created sedimentary layers of industrial-quality sandstone is that the sand was "washed and sorted" for millions of years in an ancient sea by tides, currents, wave action, and storms. Most of the impurities got washed away while the sand grains became extremely rounded and sorted into very uniform spheres. In some of the sandstone layers they almost resemble clusters of miniature eggs.
This rare silica sand layer of sedimentary rock was deposited in an ancient sea 500 million years ago that used to be located in parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois. Because this particular sandstone layer is only exposed at or near the surface in some places, it makes certain sites in Wisconsin and Minnesota very important to the sand mining industry.
To find out more about the wide range of uses for industrial-quality sand, read the "Learn More" section below, and watch the video above. Be sure to explore these other related serious science videos and their companion lesson activities on industrial sand mining, with your teachers and fellow students for some fun interactive peer learning.
The educational partner listed below supported the science video content you see here. Visit their page to learn more about their sand mining operations.