During this activity, the instructor introduces a miniature watershed, named a GeoSandbox, to provide a conceptual bridge between the schema created in the soup can water budget activity and the schoolyard watershed activity to follow. Students introduce known quantities of water to the GeoSandbox using spray bottles and measure the resulting surface flow and infiltration. The concepts of topography and land use are also introduced. Additional instructional materials are provided to firmly establish the concept of a watershed for students who need the support.

In this activity, students create and interpret a water table contour map. Students utilize groundwater well elevations and the depth to the water table at each well to determine the water table elevation at each well location. Then they utilize that information to create a contour map of the water table and determine the direction of groundwater flow.

Students extract streams and watersheds from a DEM for the island of Hawai'i. They then look to seeif there is a correlation between precipitation and the way a stream network develops on a mountain. Students also investigate if this is related to vegetation, soil type, and slope.

Waste disposal has been an ongoing problem since medieval times. Environmental engineers are employed to develop technologies to dispose of the enormous amount of trash produced in the United States. In this lesson, students will learn about the three methods of waste disposal in use by modern communities. They will also investigate how engineers design sanitary landfills to prevent leachate from polluting the underlining groundwater.

This is an overview of the sensory table center including the purpose, materials, questioning, considerations and photographic examples.

In this lesson, students will explore the causes of water pollution and its effects on the environment through the use of models and scientific investigation. In the accompanying activities, they will investigate filtration and aeration processes as they are used for removing pollutants from water. Lastly, they will learn about the role of engineers in water treatment systems.

Groundwater is one of the largest sources of drinking water, so environmental engineers need to understand groundwater flow in order to tap into this important resource. Environmental engineers also study groundwater to predict where pollution from the surface may end up. In this lesson, students will learn how water flows through the ground, what an aquifer is and what soil properties are used to predict groundwater flow.

The best way for students to understand how groundwater flows is to actually see it. In this activity, students will learn the vocabulary associated with groundwater and see a demonstration of groundwater flow. Students will learn about the measurements that environmental engineers need when creating a groundwater model of a chemical plume.

Drinking water comes from many different sources, including surface water and groundwater. Environmental engineers analyze the physical properties of groundwater to predict how and where surface contaminants will travel. In this lesson, students will learn about several possible scenarios of contamination to drinking water. They will analyze the movement of example contaminants through groundwater such as environmental engineers must do (i.e., engineers identify and analyze existing contamination of water sources in order to produce high quality drinking water for consumers).