Students will utilize Pacific Decadal Oscillation data, and Coho and Chinook Salmon data to explore the connection between salmon returns and water temperature.
Climate change is a topic we hear about every day, from increasing sea levels, warming oceans, and melting polar ice caps. But is climate change impacting our salmon populations? Students will utilize Pacific Decadal Oscillation data, and Coho and Chinook Salmon data to explore the connection between salmon returns and water temperature.
Teacher Resources
- Lesson Plan
- Video Questions
- Table 1: Pacific Decadal Oscillation
- Graphed Data for Yearly Average PDO Data
- Table 2: Graphed Data – Chinook Salmon Returns
- Comparison of Yearly Average PDO Data and Chinook Salmon Returns
- Teacher Answer Sheet to Support PDO Data and Chinook Anomaly of Numbers of Adults Returning to Spawn
- Interpretation of Data
Next Generation Science Standards
Crosscutting Concepts
- Cause and effect
Core Ideas
- ESS3.C: Human Impacts on Earth Systems
- LS2.C: Ecosystem Dynamics, Functioning, and Resilience
Practices
- Planning and carrying out investigations
- Analyzing and interpreting data
Ocean Literacy Fundamental Concepts
- 6.E: Humans affect the ocean in a variety of ways. Laws, regulations and resource management affect what is taken out and put into the ocean. Human development and activity leads to pollution (point source, non-point source, and noise pollution) and physical modifications (changes to beaches, shores and rivers). In addition, humans have removed most of the large vertebrates from the ocean.