Community Tools and Support for Data Driven Education Earth Educators' Rendezvous 2016 Jon Pollak Program Manager, CUAHSI

What is CUAHSI? Non-profit funded by the National Science Foundation with over 100 member institutions. We represent the university water research community Mission: To shape the future of hydrologic science by: Strengthening multidisciplinary collaboration, Developing and operating research infrastructure, Promoting water education and training Community Governed

CUAHSI’s Data Services Mission is to enable water data publication and reuse NSF Data Management Plans Data-Driven Education Web applications for publishing & accessing data We are in the process of developing a website on SERC Why use real data? Students may better understand scientific concepts if they are demonstrated through data generated from observations in a place they are familiar with Students can learn what challenges exist when doing “real” research Data scarcity Interpreting metadata

Tools and Data Availability Time Series Environmental Data Data Sources U.S. Federal Agencies (e.g. USGS, NOAA, NASA, EPA) Academic projects Non-profit watershed groups International governments and projects HydroClient (data.cuahsi.org) – web application for data access WaterML R Package – an R package for accessing and analyzing data

HydroClient – data.cuahsi.org

Plotting Air Temperature with R require(WaterML) require(ggplot2) USGS <- "http://hydroportal.cuahsi.org/nwisdv/cuahsi_1_1.asmx?WSDL" AirTemp <-GetValues(USGS,"NWISDV:01104480","NWISDV:00020DataType=MEAN",startDate = "2014- 09-01", endDate="2014-09-30") g <- ggplot(AirTemp, aes(x=AirTemp$time, y = AirTemp$DataValue)) + geom_point(aes(color = AirTemp$DataValue))

Example Lesson: Hypothetical Water Supply Complaint Investigation Investigate 3 scenarios where methane has been detected in stream water in PA Use HydroClient to discover and analyze data collected by the Shale Network Research Coordination Network and published with CUAHSI Use additional tools: DEP’s PA Oil and Gas Mapping Tool and the Exploration and Development Web Information Network (EDWIN) to look up well locations and well permits that are near the sites discovered in HydroClient Assess whether any of the streams may be contaminated by oil or gas wells nearby Audience: Students, Citizen Scientists, Federal Agency Employees, University Researchers Teaches about three different sources of methane in surface water. These tools can be used for teaching many different types of audiences.

Search for and Download Methane Data Use HydroClient to search for and download methane data collected by Shale Network in three different areas of PA and analyze metadata to find the location with highest values in each area: Plum Run, Washington County Highest Methane Concentration: 5.28 (µg/l) Latitude/longitude: (40.258, -80.219) Moshannon Creek, Phillipsburg Highest Methane Concentration: 24.5 (µg/l) Latitude/longitude: (40.905,-78.056) Sugar Run, Lycoming County Highest Methane Concentration: 17.5 (µg/l) Latitude/longitude: (41.235917, -76.6925)

Combine Data Tools to Further Research Use important metadata discovered with HydroClient to investigate nearby Oil and Gas Wells using the PA Oil & Gas Mapping Tool and EDWIN spatial analysis to see what may have caused high values Sugar Run, Lycoming County Unconventional Well Development nearby stream Violations recorded for defective casing and cementing

Interpreting Research and Drawing Conclusions In this activity participants learned about three different sources of methane: Plum Run: nearby conventional leaky legacy gas well Sugar Run: nearby unconventional leaky gas well Black Moshannon: nearby bog that emits gas Just showed you #2 as an example, but here is a summary of the 3 sources of methane- not all from unconventional leaky wells

How you can get involved Full-time staff available to help you: Integrate CUAHSI tools to modify existing exercises to include real data from the USGS, NOAA, other government agencies, and university researchers in your curriculum Publish your data sets with CUAHSI so your students can access and analyze your data Modules developed are being posted to a website hosted by Carleton College’s Science Educational Resource Center (SERC) for Data Driven Hydrology Education Submit an abstract to the CUAHSI Data-Driven Education Session at AGU 2017: Tools and Methods for Data Driven Education in the Water Sciences

Summary CUAHSI exists to support the academic community in water related research and education Our data services and resources can help you integrate real data into your classroom We are seeking collaborators to share data-driven educational activities through SERC We also seek feedback on our tools so that we can make them better! Please contact us if you want to get involved or have any questions: help@cuahsi.org