Teams of high school science teachers and students from Clark County, Reno and Elko are heading to the Death Valley area for three weeks beginning June 13 to study geological evidence of the area's dramatic climate variability over the past 10,000 years. The project is part of the Desert Research Institute's Nevada Science Teachers Enhancement Project (NSTEP) to give educators an alternative to textbook-based explanations of the world of science.
The geology project, led by Dr. Diana Anderson, an assistant professor at Northern Arizona University, will look at the nature of land surfaces and upper soil strata to understand how the region handled varying amounts of precipitation as the climate changed.
The DRI program is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and directed by DRI archaeologist Paul Buck. Dr. Buck said the Death Valley team is one of three student-teacher groups heading into the field this summer following a semester of training on research methods and field techniques.
Another group, composed of teams from four Las Vegas area high schools and one Reno area school, also starts a three-week field project June 13 to study the variation in ultraviolet radiation (UV) exposure in the Reno-Lake Tahoe area. Excessive UV exposure can cause a variety of serious health problems, including cancer, eye damage and possible suppression of the human immune system. A third project, involving a biological study of microorganisms in surface water in the Ruby Mountains of northeastern Nevada, will begin in late July.
The students and teachers attended special training sessions during the past semester to learn research procedures and field methods. During the coming fall semester they will analyze the data collected this summer and write projects reports. Special project web sites have been set up by DRI to allow the teams to communicate with each other and to post their data and reports.