Exploring Our Growing Need for Water

On Day 1, students will explore groundwater and how the depletion of groundwater can cause land subsidence in regions like California’s Central Valley. Students will also learn about how agricultural water use for different crops compares to the amount of water required for raising animals on farms and ranches.

On Day 2, students will read some of the Blue Planet Network’s Stories of Water to learn about how different people around the world struggle to have access to clean water and some of the ways they have addressed this issue. They will also explore their own water use habits and ways they can reduce water waste in their home using a water calculator from the Alliance for Water Efficiency and a leaky faucet calculator from the U.S. Geological Survey’s Water Science School.

Students will

1. Discover some of the water sustainability issues people are currently dealing with around the world, like water waste, access to clean freshwater, agricultural water use, and the depletion of groundwater.
2. Connect with real stories and data to learn more about the people and places where these water sustainability issues are present.

• Computer with Internet access
• Projector
• Flipside Science video: How Do We Meet the Growing Need for Water?
• A computer lab with at least one computer for every 2 students (for Day 2 only)
• Student Journal (1 per student, also available in Spanish, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese)
• calculators
• 1-3 glass jars filled with sand saturated with water
• 4 heads of broccoli (optional)
• 2 small bags of almonds (~ 1 handful is enough) (optional- omit these if you have students with nut allergies in your class)
• 2 small bowls of strawberries (optional)
• 1-lb weight (optional)
• 2 empty clean gallon plastic milk jugs (optional)

1. Introduce your students to water sustainability and environmental issues by showing them the Flipside Science: How Do We Meet the Growing Need for Water? video.
    
2. Ask for volunteers to talk about one or two things they learned from the video, and make a list of these things on the board. Explain that the youth in the video are talking about some important environmental and sustainability issues related to water. Check that students have an understanding of what ‘sustainability’ means.
    
3. Replay the video for students a second time.
    
4. Working in pairs, students will dive deeper into two of the water sustainability and environmental issues introduced in the video (they will explore the other two issues during the following class period or hour).

1. Ask students to share some of their thoughts from the agricultural water use station activity.

• How does the amount of water it takes to grow broccoli compare to strawberries? (On an area of land the size of a football field: approximately 81,000 gallons of water for 15,000 heads of broccoli, 1.1 million gallons of water for 1 million almonds, 200,000 gallons of water for 500,000 strawberries)
• How does the amount of water needed to raise farm animals compare to the water needed to grow fruits and vegetables? Why is so much more water needed to raise animals?
• What other factors might come into play when making your decision about what to produce on your farm? (my total area of land, my annual availability of water, market prices for each product, my personal preferences (e.g. pigs are smelly!), how long it takes to raise animals vs. plants, etc.)

2. Ask students to share some of their thoughts from the groundwater supply station activity.

• Why is the amount of groundwater in many parts of California decreasing? Where is the groundwater going?
• Groundwater is often depleted more quickly during drought years compared to wet years. Why might this be?
• What are some negative impacts of pumping too much groundwater? Why would land sinking be bad for buildings or houses? How might groundwater depletion impact ecosystems in rivers and streams?

1. Book the computer lab for a full class period, and have students work in pairs to complete the rest of their journal. Leave 15-20 minutes at the end of the class period for reflection and discussion.

• Santa Clara Valley Water District: Where does our water come from? Groundwater
• San Francisco Public Utilities Commission: Our Water: Many Users, Many Uses! and Let’s Save Water! Every Drop Matters
• California Academy of Sciences Science News article: Monitoring the Drought from Space
• The Water Education Foundation: Project Wet
• U.S. Geological Survey’s Water Science School: Leaky faucet calculator
• U.S. Geological Survey CA Water Science Center: Delta-Mendota Canal: Evaluation of Groundwater Conditions & Land Subsidence
• Alliance for Water Efficiency's home water use calculator
• Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment: Understanding California's Groundwater

How Can We Conserve Our Water Resources?
In this lesson, students will practice rapid ideation—an important step in design thinking—by brainstorming solutions to issues surrounding global water issues.

Humans depend on water, and our need for this precious resource is growing alongside our population. How will we meet the needs of the future without harming the environment? In this unit, we'll explore environmental issues related to our water use, and learn how simple choices we make impact our planet.