Discussion Area - Fall2002
Letters of Introduction

Rand Preparatory School

Rand Preparatory School is a primary school in Johannesburg, South Africa, the city that has recent hosted the "Earth" summit. Two of our Grade 7 pupils took part in the parallel "children's summit" as our school is a member of Jane Goodall's "Roots and Shoots" environmental awareness organization. We have made environmental awareness our theme for this term particularly, especially emphasizing the conservation and care of water. Recent articles in local newspapers suggest strongly that more people die from the effects of dirty water than disease on the African continent. Our senior pupils from Gr. 4 to Gr. 7 have been studying our local river, the Julskei and are testing different parts of it, to see how clean it is, how much "life" there is etc. and we would very much like to be involved in the Project.

Carmel College

Carmel College [http://www.carmel.school.nz/]is a Catholic Girls School, noted for its Mercy charism and academic excellence. We were founded by the Sisters of Mercy in 1957 and since then have grown to a school of nine hundred students. Over the past 45 years the school has retained its core values that encourage students to “Act justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with God”  [Micah 6:8] Carmel College is located in Auckland, New Zealand, on the edge of Lake Pupuke: Latitude: 174 00 E Longitude: 41 00 S New Zealand http://www.maps.com/explore/factbook/newzealand.html is an island nation in the South pacific with a population of 3.5 million people. Our system of Government is based on the Westminster model and we are still part of the British Commonwealth. English is the first language of the country although Te Reo Maori is also recognised as an official language. As a Southern Hemisphere country we are preparing for the summer vacation – which runs from December 6, 2002 until February 3, 2003. This is our main school vacation, we have three other 2 week vacations in April, July and October. New Zealand is renowned for its unique clean green environment and our water monitoring project aims to enhance community awareness of the lake and encourage students to accept community responsibility. This year we have been developing a multi disciplinary project incorporating environmental monitoring and information technology. This has involved designing a web page, setting up a web cam and weather station and most importantly, regular water monitoring. Our web page for this project - http://www.projectpupuke.school.nz/ is still under construction and should be active from November 27, 2002.

Emery High School

Letter of Introduction from Emery High School -Dalton Biology Classes Students working on this project are from Emery High School, which is found in Castle Dale, Utah. Our latitude and longitude is W111 degrees and N39 degrees. Our community is a rural high school with 560 students. It is a county high school which is very sports oriented. The community around us is a farming/mining community. We will turn in results from only two sites, though there will be a total of 15 different sites tested. We are able to participate in this survey thanks to our local Water Conservation District giving our FFA program and biology class a financial grant. It was given so that we would be a little more conservative and water minded. In the spring the FFA will be competing with the information we all gathered and will be presenting their issue about water resources. We will also be publishing our results in our local paper and making a trifold which will hopefully better educate the public about our local waterways.

Powell Middle School

Powell is an urban middle school with approximately 1000 students in attendance. The student body is 99.2% African-American. Powell Middle School is located in Jackson, Mississippi, at 32" 17' Latitude and 90" 10' Longitude. The classes that are offered at Powell Middle School in addition to regular classes are Honors classes, Open Doors, Career Discovery, Computer Discovery, and APAC Academics. Students also Participate in extra curricula activities such as football, basket ball, soccer, tennis and band. The 8th grade APAC Science classes will test the quality of water at Mayes Lake as part of the Global Water Testing project. Mayes Lake is located in Jackson near the Northeastern city limits. It is a part of Lefluer's Bluff State Park. The major source of water for Mayes Lake is the Pearl River. Camping, fishing and boating are some of the major activities that take place at this lake. After observing the lake and its surrounding area, our hypothesis is that the water quality will be good for the purpose for which the lake is used. We think the water temperature, dissolved oxygen, nitrates, and phosphate levels will be acceptable. The pH may be slightly acidic due to the heavy traffic on the highway and boating activities in the water.

East Mecklenburg High

Water quality is an important factor in the environment. Water is needed to sustain life, and therefore the water must be in good quality. Our IB Biology 3 class in Charlotte, NC traveled to a local creek by the name of Reedy Creek. The creek is located at 35:16:05N latitude and 080:42:49W longitude. The elevation is approximately 725 feet above sea level. The creek is located in the city limits, in what was once a rural area. It is still somewhat protected and enclosed in a large park full of hiking trails. These hiking trails bring along hundreds of people through and around Reedy Creek. The entire region has been experiencing a period of extreme drought. It had just rained two days before we tested the creek. Our group is composed of twelve IB Biology seniors from East Mecklenburg High School. We formed six groups of two. Each group was in charge of performing two of the chemical or physical water quality tests, and then everyone collected macroinvertebrates. We have been studying habitats and populations and decided to compare the aquatic habitats and populations of a more protected stream and a stream that runs through a developed area. We are hoping to find data for the developed stream from another school in this project.