Crossing America is Heading to Glacier National Park! ❄️🏔
📅 Date: May 9, 2025
⏰Time: 1 PM ET
📍 Live from Glacier National Park!
Get ready for an exciting virtual adventure as we explore Glacier National Park—one of the most breathtaking and fragile ecosystems in the world. Together, we’ll uncover how climate change is affecting its glaciers, wildlife, and landscapes, and how we can take action to protect our own communities!
🌿 Challenge Overview (Aligned with UN Global Goals #13 & #15 - Climate Action & Life on Land)
Glaciers are melting, wildlife is adapting, and ecosystems are shifting. But we can be part of the solution! Your mission:
💡 Engineering Design Challenge: Can YOU create a nature-based solution that helps your community become more resilient to climate change?
🏗️ Your challenge is to design a project that:
✅ Reduces erosion and protects rivers like Glacier’s glacial-fed streams
✅ Creates safe wildlife corridors to help animals adapt to changing landscapes
✅ Uses renewable energy, like a solar-powered structure that benefits conservation efforts
✅ Engages the community with an accessible nature trail that educates visitors about climate action
🔍 What’s happening in your area? Are you seeing more extreme weather, habitat loss, or pollution? How can your idea help solve a real-world problem?
📚 Bonus! We’ll also be sharing some great children’s books about Glacier National Park and the impact of climate change on wild places.
🚀 Get creative and share your designs with us! Whether you sketch, build a model, or create a digital prototype, we want to see your innovative ideas.
🎥 Join us LIVE on May 9 for this hands-on adventure! Let’s work together to protect the planet, one idea at a time. 🌎✨
📅 Date: May 9, 2025
⏰Time: 1 PM ET
📍 Live from Glacier National Park!
Get ready for an exciting virtual adventure as we explore Glacier National Park—one of the most breathtaking and fragile ecosystems in the world. Together, we’ll uncover how climate change is affecting its glaciers, wildlife, and landscapes, and how we can take action to protect our own communities!
🌿 Challenge Overview (Aligned with UN Global Goals #13 & #15 - Climate Action & Life on Land)
Glaciers are melting, wildlife is adapting, and ecosystems are shifting. But we can be part of the solution! Your mission:
💡 Engineering Design Challenge: Can YOU create a nature-based solution that helps your community become more resilient to climate change?
🏗️ Your challenge is to design a project that:
✅ Reduces erosion and protects rivers like Glacier’s glacial-fed streams
✅ Creates safe wildlife corridors to help animals adapt to changing landscapes
✅ Uses renewable energy, like a solar-powered structure that benefits conservation efforts
✅ Engages the community with an accessible nature trail that educates visitors about climate action
🔍 What’s happening in your area? Are you seeing more extreme weather, habitat loss, or pollution? How can your idea help solve a real-world problem?
📚 Bonus! We’ll also be sharing some great children’s books about Glacier National Park and the impact of climate change on wild places.
🚀 Get creative and share your designs with us! Whether you sketch, build a model, or create a digital prototype, we want to see your innovative ideas.
🎥 Join us LIVE on May 9 for this hands-on adventure! Let’s work together to protect the planet, one idea at a time. 🌎✨
Lesson 1: Glacier Math – Scale and Movement
Objective: Help students understand the scale of glaciers, their movement, and how they shape the landscape.
Activity:
Lesson 2: Silt and Tilt – How Glaciers Shape the Land
Objective: Explore how glaciers erode and deposit material to form landforms like valleys and moraines.
Activity:
Lesson 3: The Lewis Overthrust – Ancient Rocks on Top
Objective: Introduce students to the Lewis Overthrust and how it reveals some of the oldest rocks in North America.
Activity:
Lesson 4: The Impact of Glaciers – Then and Now
Objective: Understand how glaciers have shaped Glacier National Park and what their retreat means for the future.
Activity:
Objective: Help students understand the scale of glaciers, their movement, and how they shape the landscape.
Activity:
- Show students images of Grinnell Glacier and other major glaciers in Glacier National Park. Discuss their size and movement.
- Have students calculate how much a glacier moves over time using real data from Glacier National Park (e.g., an average glacier may move inches to feet per year).
- Challenge students to measure out these distances in the classroom or on a playground, marking the yearly movement of a glacier compared to human walking speed.
- Create a graph showing the retreat of glaciers in Glacier National Park over the past century.
Lesson 2: Silt and Tilt – How Glaciers Shape the Land
Objective: Explore how glaciers erode and deposit material to form landforms like valleys and moraines.
Activity:
- Demonstrate glacier erosion by using a block of ice mixed with sand and small pebbles to "scrape" across a soft surface (such as a tray of damp sand or clay). Observe the scratches and grooves left behind.
- Discuss how glaciers pick up sediment (silt, gravel, boulders) and deposit them as they melt, creating features like moraines and outwash plains.
- Have students build a model of a glacier and its deposits using sand, small rocks, and ice cubes, then let the ice melt to see how material is left behind.
- Compare before-and-after images of valleys carved by glaciers, focusing on U-shaped valleys in Glacier National Park.
Lesson 3: The Lewis Overthrust – Ancient Rocks on Top
Objective: Introduce students to the Lewis Overthrust and how it reveals some of the oldest rocks in North America.
Activity:
- Show students images of the Lewis Overthrust Fault and explain how older rocks were pushed on top of younger rocks due to tectonic forces.
- Use a stack of books to model how rock layers shift and slide over each other under pressure.
- Have students create a cross-section drawing of Glacier National Park’s geology, labeling the different rock layers and their estimated ages.
- Explore samples (or images) of Precambrian and Paleozoic rocks found in the park and discuss how they formed.
Lesson 4: The Impact of Glaciers – Then and Now
Objective: Understand how glaciers have shaped Glacier National Park and what their retreat means for the future.
Activity:
- Compare historic photos of glaciers in the park to modern images, noting changes over time.
- Discuss how climate change is affecting glacier size and movement.
- Have students create an illustrated timeline showing how a glacier advances, carves a valley, and eventually melts, leaving behind lakes, moraines, and U-shaped valleys.
- Brainstorm ways humans can help reduce the impact of climate change on glaciers and ecosystems.
