GLOBE Hydrology

GLOBE Hydrology

Naperville Community Unit School District 203

November 7th, 2009

In November 2006, we were chilled by cold winds and temperatures near freezing. This year we didn't even need a jacket. Highlands School teacher Ms. Kouri and Steeple Run teacher Maureen Nolan have been participating in the "Bass in the Class" program for quite a few years. Students raise Bass Fish in their classrooms then release them into Hidden Lake after they carefully check the temperature of the water. They enthusiastically wave good by to their scaled friends. In 2005, Mr. Lopatka helped students take GPS readings of the site, so that they could let GLOBE teachers, students and scientists know where Hidden Lake was located on the globe. They also measured the PH, conductivity, temperature and turbidity of the water. The site became the second Steeple Run School GLOBE Hydrology site. Students again tested the water quality and entered the data into the GLOBE Data base. They have been monitoring the water at Rotts creek for several years, while Highland students been monitoring macro invertebrates and water quality at the DuPage river site and Herrick Lake.

Click here to see Hydrology Test Data

Ms. Kouri from Highlands School checks the water temperature.	Ms. Kouri gets a water sample for testing by Mr. Lopatka's group

The temperature in the pail is now the same as the lake	One of the students checks the transparency of the water
	After the Bass release, several students and parents went over to the Morton Arboretum's GLOBE Weather station. Mr. Lopatka, Mrs. Nolan and Stacy record the atmospheric data.
They check the PH of the rain water	They measured the amount of rain that fell in the last 7 days
They recorded the Minimum/Maximum temperatures for the last 6 days. It was below freezing just a few days ago.	We checked the cloud cover and airplane contrails. There were no clouds and only one short lived contrail.

Only one leaf remains on our study trees. Only the London Plane Tree had one of the 4 leaves that we were observing. The White Oak, Bur Oak and Ginkgo had dropped their leaves last week.	Mr. Lopatka shows the girls how we use the GLOBE color chart to record the color change of the leaves.
Mr. Lopatka shows the girls the frost tube that we have been measuring the debt of the winter frost
This picture shows the Bur Oak leaf in early October	This is the London Plane Tree leaf on October 3, 2009

In the spring time, we check for bud burst and leaf size	This is a bud on the Bur Oak