Seventh grade students have been learning about sea level rise (SLR) throughout the school year, learning lots of science concepts along the way! Now is our time to become community-focused and blend our academic learning with this real and consequential community issue!
Dragonheart Volunteers Alex Brasili and Sonja Schmanska have stepped up to help students take their learning into the community and create a podcast that aims to be a voice of both students and adults learning about and reflecting on SLR impacts and potential solutions that fit St. George.
After kicking off our project with some serious brainstorming, we identified what content we might want in our podcast and made groups by interest.
We started to get familiar with community SLR concerns we knew about – all the roads and places that have flooded in the January storms and other memorable storms. We located the road areas, then checked them out with the Flood Resiliency mapping tool. We learned that our state has directed agencies to plan for an estimated 1.9 foot sea level rise by 2050, (which puts students in their late 30’s) and 3.9 feet by 2100 (when students are in their 80’s – still their lifetime!)
We invited Mr. Richard Bates and Mr. John Maltais, Chairpersons of the town’s Resiliency Committee and the Comprehensive Planning Committee to talk with us about the work being organized to respond to this problem. We learned a lot!!
We enjoyed conversation about…
- causes of global sea level rise
- two main consequences of sea level rise
- the three main “tools” or options for town planning (shown in this picture!)
- how we can help reduce greenhouse gases
- solar panels for the CTE Maker Space building
- solar farm and heat pump discussions for electricity and heat at the school
- ground elevations mapping by Sebago Technics using LIDAR scanning from a drone
- how the LIDAR data can be used to create models for demonstrating impacts and proposed solutions
We are very excited to continue this project to reach out into the community and talk with others and share our own ideas about what we learn!
Our thanks go out to our guests, Mr. Richard Bates and Mr. John Maltais, as well as our Dragonheart Volunteers, Alex Brasili and Sonja Schmanska!