Climate Detectives Projects 2019-2020

Project title: Sea BRICKS (Bringing Research Into the Classroom: a Key to Sustainability)

Team: eHAND

2019-2020   Liceo statale classico e scientifico Ettore Majorana   Desio   Italy   20 Student’s age: 14-15

We are involved in the Erasmus + project BRICKS which aims at the achievement of the goals of Agenda 2030 about sustainability and climate action. We focused on Global warming and the Ocean and Sea problems (Ocean warming, sea-level rise, water pollution..) The ocean covers 70% of Earth’s surface and plays a starring role in whatever happens with the environment. Sea level is not just a main indicator of climate change (that is, it tells us that climate change is happening); it has also one of the main impacts of climate change. Coastal erosion, coastal flooding and saltwater intrusion in the coastal aquifer are all important impacts.We did research and experiments on these problems in collaboration with other partner schools from Greece, Portugal and Cyprus (schools involved are all in Mediterranean area, with similar issues related to climate change and considered climate ‘hot spot’ by the report IPCC 2017). From the end of March 2020 until 24 April 2020, we studied in depth the relation between sea-level rise, coastal erosion, inundations and seawater penetration to coastal aquifers. We reported our activities, their pedagogical value, materials and resources we used at the page Ocean and sea warming in eTwinning

Coastal erosion has some very serious consequences, such as the destruction of natural defenses, which cause the loss of economically important areas.  There are many reasons why coastlines are retreating: • The gradual caving in or sinking of an area of land (SUBSIDENCE)  • Sea level rise • The urbanization of the coasts • The sediments transported by rivers are drastically decreasing We studied and analyzed available satellite images to define the coastal erosion in the last 20 years and the sea level rise in different areas and we had different results: the highest erosion rates affect the major Italian river deltas, where 10 m/year retreat can be frequently observed , but in other areas there is not evidence of erosion. We focused in particular on area near Venice, where the increase in sea level is influenced by a lot of factors related to climate change, like the melting of glaciers, and the increase in volume due to average sea water temperatures. In addition, this phenomenon aided by so-called “subsidence”, i.e. the sinking of the soil by natural causes. We did experiments about the topic in laboratory and researched the thermal expansion and the extra heat which causes the melting of ice sheets and glaciers on land (https://spark.liceodesio.edu.it/mod/book/view.php?id=1870&chapterid=103)

We participated in many events related to climate change to make our own contribution, such as competitions and scientific events. (https://twinspace.etwinning.net/92473/pages/page/692189) Unfortunaly our planned activities during the month of March and April could not be done, so we participeted to the 2020 STEM Discovery Campaign online and wrote on their blog https://blogs.eun.org/sdw-blog/2020/05/05/sea-bricks-bringing-research-into-the-classroom-a-key-to-sustainability/

https://twinspace.etwinning.net/92473/pages/page/856067