It's Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {TAPS Manual Part 5: Improperly Operated Landfills}

Frannie's friends at the Groundwater Foundation recently published the second edition of the Training About Protecting the Source (TAPS) Manual. The manual guides users through hands-on activities that explore potential threats to groundwater and challenges them to think about what can be done to protect this key drinking water source.

This manual can be used inside the classroom and is aligned to the national Next Generation Science Standards, but Frannie loves just learning about groundwater, no matter where she is. For the next few weeks, you can join her as she works through the different activities. 

Frannie will be using the Groundwater Foundation's Awesome Aquifer Kit, but if you don't have one, you can follow along with materials that might be found around your home. This is the second part of Frannie's exploration of the TAPS Manual. You can follow the link to see what she learned about sinkholes, leaky underground storage tanks, improperly abandoned wells and the over-application of fertilizer.

Today's activity is....Improperly Operated Landfills.

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A municipal solid waste landfill (MSWLF) is an area of land that typically receives household waste and sometimes can receive other types of nonhazardous waste, such as commercial solid waste, nonhazardous sludge, and industrial nonhazardous solid waste. According to the EPA, there are approximately 2,000 MSWLFs in the U.S. that are managed by the states in which they are located. When rain, snow, or runoff water soaks into and through a landfill, it can dissolve some of the landfill’s contents and, in an improperly constructed or operated landfill, carry it on down to the groundwater. This mixture of recharge and particles from the landfill’s contents is called leachate. As the amount of waste increases, the potential for leachate to enter the groundwater increases.

For this activity, you will need:

• Awesome Aquifer Kit
• Plastic box
• Gravel
• Plastic tube
• Hand pump or syringe
• Nylon
• Rubber band
• 2 inch square piece of dyed paper towel (prepped in advance)
• Dip a paper towel in/or spray with slightly diluted food coloring (2 drops of dye per ounce of water)
• Allow to dry completely.
• 16 oz cup of water

Activity Steps 

1. Read through all the instructions first before you begin to build the model. Make sure you have all the needed materials and supplies.

 

2. Fill the plastic box with gravel until it is about ¼ full.

 

3. Add water so that half of the rocks are covered. (This will represent an aquifer.)

 

4. Create a well by covering the end of the plastic tube with nylon, securing it with a rubber band.

 5. Insert the well, with the well screen on the bottom, near one corner of the plastic box. Push the well down so that it reaches the bottom of the model.

 

6. Take the colored piece of paper towel, scrunch it up, and bury it on the opposite side of the model from the well location and near the outside of the box. (This is your landfill.)  

 

7. Pour or spray water on the surface of the gravel to simulate rain. Observe what happens to the landfill and groundwater after the rain.

8.  Pump the well by inserting the tip of the syringe into the well (plastic tube) or attaching and pumping the hand pump.

Once it got wet, the stained paper towel began to leach some red into the surrounding groundwater. Frannie also noticed that the water she pumped out of the other end of the model was colored a light pink. Leachate from improperly managed landfills can flow in underground plumes, eventually contaminating nearby wells, but this can be prevented. Landfills that are properly operated have safety measures in place to mitigate the chances that dangerous chemicals will enter into the ground. Proper recycling of hazardous waste, such as pharmaceuticals, paint, oil, cleaners, electronics, batteries, and more can keep contaminants from getting into the system in the first place.

It's Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {TAPS Manual Part 2: Over-Application of Fertilizer}

Frannie's friends at the Groundwater Foundation recently published the second edition of the Training About Protecting the Source (TAPS) Manual. The manual guides users through hands-on activities that explore potential threats to groundwater and challenges them to think about what can be done to protect this key drinking water source.

This manual can be used inside the classroom and is aligned to the national Next Generation Science Standards, but Frannie loves just learning about groundwater, no matter where she is. For the next few weeks, you can join her as she works through the different activities. 

Frannie will be using the Groundwater Foundation's Awesome Aquifer Kit, but if you don't have one, you can follow along with materials that might be found around your home. This is the second part of Frannie's exploration of the TAPS Manual. You can follow the link to see what she learned about improperly abandoned wells.

Today's activity is....Over-Application of Fertilizer.

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Fertilizers promote plant growth and green lawns by helping plants meet their nutrient needs, primarily for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Plants, however, are limited in the amount they can absorb and use. Fertilizers applied in excess can soak down into the groundwater or run off into surface water bodies. This pollution of surface and groundwater can impact our drinking water supplies.

For this activity, you will need:

• Awesome Aquifer Kit, OR
• Plastic box
• Gravel
• Plastic tube
• Hand pump or Syringe
• Nylon
• Rubber band
• 1 packet or 1 tablespoon of colored powdered drink mix (ex. Kool-Aid, Gatorade, etc)
• 16 oz cup of water

Activity Steps

1. Read through all the instructions first before you begin to build the model. Make sure you have all the needed materials and supplies.

 

2. Fill the plastic box with gravel until it is about ¼ full.

 

3. Add water so that half of the rocks are covered. (This will represent an aquifer.)

 

4. Create a well by covering the end of the plastic tube with nylon, securing it with a rubber band.

 

5. Insert the well, with the well screen on the bottom, near one corner of the plastic box. Push the well down so that it reaches the bottom of the model.

 

6. Add more gravel until the box is about ½-¾ full. The surface of the gravel should be fairly level across the box.

 

7. Sprinkle ½ a packet, about 1 tablespoon, of powdered drink mix (i.e. Kool-Aid) 

on the surface of the gravel to simulate fertilizer.

 

   

8. Pour water on the surface of the gravel to simulate rain.

 

9. Make observations

 

10. Pump the well by inserting the tip of the syringe into the well (plastic tube) or attaching and pumping the hand pump.

 

11. Observe what happens to the fertilizer and water when the well is pumped.

Frannie observed that once the water "rained" over her aquifer, the colored drink mix, which represents fertilizer, quickly mixed with the recharge and infiltrated into the groundwater below. Very quickly, the whole aquifer was contaminated with the red drink mix. When she tried to pump groundwater out, Frannie wasn't able to get any clean water. 

Frannie knows that fertilizers help plants grow healthy and strong, but there are ways and times to apply them responsibly so that plants can absorb all of the nutrients they need without any extra leaching in the groundwater below.

BLOG: Groundwater Education that Works

by Jennifer Wemhoff, Groundwater Foundation

Groundwater can be a tricky subject to teach. After all, you can't go outside and look at groundwater the way you can a lake or river. It's hard to visualize something so abstract, let alone understand and appreciate it.

That challenge has driven the Groundwater Foundation for 35 years to find innovative, hands-on, brains-on ways to teach kids - and adults - about groundwater.

Over the past couple years, the Groundwater Foundation has implemented a wide-ranging project, Recharging Groundwater Education: Tools for Engagement and Action. Through the project's pilot in Nebraska, over 300 educators learned how to use various teaching tools in their classroom, including:

• Awesome Aquifer Kit
• Hydrogeology Challenge

Both the Awesome Aquifer Kit and Hydrogeology Challenge enable students to investigate groundwater, a vital natural resource that plays a critical role in sustaining life but cannot be experienced directly. The tools also allow educators to point out issues specific to their local community (i.e. lithology from local well logs, existing contamination threats, etc.), which is an important feature to making the lessons pertinent to students' lives.

These tools have been used with great success in elementary, middle, and high schools across the state, and thanks to online training and resources, throughout the country and world. Educators told us: "I now feel prepared and motivated to teach about groundwater and its role in life and our role in protecting it to my students."

Some educators first utilized the groundwater education activities in the classroom, but then moved beyond into local action. "In-classroom learning went great, and it became a three-week unit including an onsite field trip based on the reported hydrogeology of the area. The students were engaged the majority of the time and were challenged to determine outcomes from the classroom learning."

The Awesome Aquifer Kit is a hands-on model-building kit that promotes cooperative learning through inquiry. Because groundwater is hidden in aquifers below the earth’s surface, the unique format of the Kit allows students to “see” groundwater and how it moves. As students build their aquifer model, they increase their environmental literacy and understanding of groundwater’s role in their lives. The versatility of the Awesome Aquifer Kit enables educators to challenge students of different grade levels with varying levels of complexity. 

A high school teacher who used the Kit in the classroom told us: "The activities are fun and easy to follow. They explained groundwater and how to translate it to the classroom."

The Hydrogeology Challenge is a data-driven computer-based groundwater simulation tool that challenges students to investigate groundwater flow, contemplate the difference between modeling and reality, and apply the calculations to identify solutions to real-life threats to groundwater. The Hydrogeology Challenge is a highly regarded teaching tool by educational and water industry professionals and can be adapted to many grade levels. An assistant professor in Geology and Geological Engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology stated: “It is a great tool for introducing groundwater modeling.” And a student who used Hydrogeology said: “Hydrogeology is my favorite part of science and using it in conjunction with computer modeling is an interesting new way to study it.”  

Groundwater education is necessary to foster the next generation of groundwater industry professionals, managers, and stewards. Get started in your classroom or community: www.groundwater.org/kids or get in touch at info@groundwater.org. 

It's Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {Video Learning Series: Groundwater Education Toolkit Training Videos}

This is the fourth blog in a series of video learning opportunities from the Groundwater Foundation. Click to see the previous blogs on the Groundwater Foundation, how the Awesome Aquifer Kits are made, and the Groundwater Guardian program.
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Groundwater education is so important in the process of protecting this precious resource. Integrating the Groundwater Foundation's educational tools is easier than ever with a new series of training videos.

Each video focuses on a different resource within the educator toolkit. The first video in the series outlines what groundwater is, why groundwater education in our classroom is so important, and sets up how the training videos will help educators bring groundwater models into their classroom.

The following three videos in the series focus on the Hydrogeology Challenge, an online groundwater model that presents users with a map of an area with wells and some well logs. Users walk through the same calculations that professional hydrogeologists use to calculate groundwater flow direction, slope, and speed. In the classroom, teachers can challenge their students even further with an Applied Knowledge Scenario, which asks the students to use the calculations to evaluate a potential threat to groundwater. The Hydrogeology Challenge and Applied Knowledge Scenarios is best used with upper level students to show them how algebra and geometry can be used with science to solve real-world problems.

The rest of the videos in the series shine a light on the many different activities that can be done with the Awesome Aquifer Kit. Faithful readers of Frannie's blog may remember the blog series she did a while ago, demonstrating everything from the connection between groundwater and surface water to how permeability affects groundwater's ability to flow within different soils. The videos provide top tips on how use the kits, maintain them, and make them a regular part of a teacher's water science unit.

You can watch each video on its own or watch them all in a playlist on the Groundwater Foundation's YouTube channel.

BLOG: Groundwater Education in Hawaii

by Jennifer Wemhoff, Groundwater Foundation

Earlier this year, in the middle of one of the snowiest winters on record in the Groundwater Foundation’s hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska, we received an order from the Groundwater Catalog for 10 Awesome Aquifer Kits and JUG (Just Understanding Groundwater) kits. I was instantly jealous of the kits, as they were headed off to say “Aloha” and help people understand groundwater in their new home of Hawaii.

For the last 33 years, Daniel Chang has been involved in environmental education and outreach, in one form or another, while working on drinking water and groundwater quality with the Hawaii Department of Health. Chang has been instrumental in getting groundwater education tools into the hands of educators. He understands the value of groundwater as a natural resource and its finite nature.

“If we contaminate or waste this resource, we cannot go out and get more, so we need to be good stewards, use it wisely, and protect it from contamination,” he said. “Education and outreach is one way to get the message out. Knowledgeable citizens and students are important in ensuring good quality water now and into the future.”

Although it’s surrounded by water as an island state, Hawaii relies on groundwater as its main source of water for drinking and irrigation. Over 500 million gallons per day of groundwater is used in the state to fulfill domestic, commercial, and industrial needs. Groundwater provides about 99 percent of Hawaii’s domestic water and about 50 percent of freshwater used in Hawaii. Hawaii’s groundwater resources may appear plentiful, but much of the precipitation runs off to the ocean in streams or returns to the atmosphere by evapotranspiration.

Naturally, Chang wanted to help Hawaiians understand this resource. “Working in the State’s  Groundwater Protection Program, we would get calls from schools to talk about groundwater in Hawaii and needed a way to explain how groundwater works to students,” he said.

While looking for possible activities that he and his colleagues could use to present to students, he came across the AAK and JUG through the Groundwater Foundation catalog, and was excited
about how the tools could be used.

“The interesting part of these kits was that they were simple, yet provided several activities that we could do to teach the students about groundwater,” Chang explained. He said they use both the AAK and the JUG to teach students groundwater basics.

The kits have been used in a variety of educational settings that showcase their adaptability. From groundwater displays at Earth Day events and county fairs, Project WET educator trainings, special events like the annual Make-A-Splash Water Festival conducted by the Kauai Department of Water, to direct education in classrooms with students, the JUG and AAK are helping to spread the message about groundwater.

Notably, the Hawaii Department of Health provided funding to the state’s Project WET Coordinating Agency to purchase AAK and JUG kits that were provided to educators that attended the Project WET Educator’s Workshops for use in their classrooms.

They’re making an impact. “Students enjoy the different activities that we teach them using these educational tools,” Chang said. “Many of them ask us when we are coming back to do more activities with them.”

Other agencies have also embraced the kits as teaching tools, including Chang’s Hawaii Department of Health and the Kauai Department of Water, which Chang said has has spurred environmental education beyond groundwater. He points out that in the recently completed Hawaii State Science and
Engineering Fair, personnel from the Department of Health judged 20 projects related to drinking water and groundwater.

“This is a significant increase over the past 10-20 years when we were lucky to see just a handful of projects,” Chang said.

Chang knows his and his team’s work isn’t done when it comes to teaching people about  groundwater. “While the State has made progress in our groundwater education and outreach efforts, there is still a lot more that needs to be done,” he said.

Chang is excited about continuing to find new ways to deliver groundwater education. He knows that new and creative ways of groundwater education come from reviewing existing ideas and activities, creative and innovative thinking, and the sharing of ideas.

“The Groundwater Foundation has been a great resource in our efforts,” Chang said.

Get your own Awesome Aquifer Kit, Just Understanding Groundwater kit, or other useful groundwater education products from the Groundwater Foundation’s online catalog.

BLOG: Free Educator Toolkit

by Jennifer Wemhoff, Groundwater Foundation

The Groundwater Foundation has compiled a variety of educational tools and resources into a convenient downloadable Educator Toolkit, available for free on the Foundation’s website.

The Toolkit is organized by age level, making it easy for elementary, middle, and high school educators to find the tools to best suit their classrooms or extracurricular setting. There are also a series of tools appropriate for all age groups.

The featured tool for both elementary and middle school ages is the Awesome Aquifer Kit. The additional resources can be used to supplement the curriculum.

Elementary resources include fun hands-on activities like the story of Frannie the Fish, Growing with Groundwater, word searches and crossword puzzles, Upcycled Conservation Flowers, Clean Water Challenge, and many more.

For middle school educators, find lesson plans and student worksheets, plus instructions for activities like You Be the Judge, Contamination on the Move, Water Quality Survey, and other free tools.

For high school educators, the featured tool is the Hydrogeology Challenge, a learning tool that introduces students to basic groundwater modeling concepts. Find a guide to Hydrogeology and links to other advanced activities.

There are additional free tools and resources appropriate for all ages - a demonstration of the Awesome Aquifer Kit, the Water1der and 30by30 free mobile apps, and the Groundwater Guardian and Groundwater Guardian Green Site programs.

Find the free educator toolkit, along with other great resources educators can use in the classroom and beyond to help students understand groundwater and how they can take action to protect it, visit www.groundwater.org/kids/classroom.

It's Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {Girl Scout Groundwater Patches}

National Groundwater Awareness Week is coming up next month, March 11-16th. One way Girl Scout troops can celebrate is by earning the Girl Scout Groundwater Patches! There are patches and guide books for every grade level so you can keep learning more about groundwater, the water we drink and the water that grows our food.

To earn your “Ask Me About Groundwater” patch, all you need to do is complete two activities from different steps within the booklet. These steps can include anything from upcycled crafts to meeting with water professionals or even conducting your own experiments. Seem too easy? Show everyone that you’re a groundwater expert by completing more activities listed in the book and earn the “Let’s Keep It Clean” patch!

Girl Scout Troop 20605 from the Spirit of Nebraska Council earned their Brownie level groundwater patches while exploring the “WOW!: Wonders of Water” Journey. You can read more about their story or start your own water journey by finding your patch booklet on the Groundwater Foundation's website!

Don't forget to share your progress with Frannie on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Good luck!

BLOG: Recharging Groundwater Education

Recharging Groundwater Education trains teachers to
further engage students in groundwater education.

The Groundwater Foundation is thrilled to begin work on a new project funded by EPA Region 7.

The Environmental Education grant was awarded in conjunction with EPA’s Office of External Affairs and the Environmental Education Program in Washington, D.C.

The grant project, “Recharging Groundwater Education,” will train teachers to engage students in problem-solving and critical thinking around local environmental threats to the groundwater supply in Nebraska; mentor high school students through outdoor internships and stewardship projects; and promote student exploration and awareness of career opportunities in water-related science and engineering fields.

“This grant helps teach Nebraska students about how to protect their Nebraska groundwater through hands-on experience with nature, and explore Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) career paths,” said EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.

Jane Griffin, Groundwater Foundation President said, “We are excited about the opportunity to equip educators to teach about groundwater and to complement the lessons learned in the classroom with mentoring opportunities for students to learn about careers and to get involved in local protection efforts.  With over 30 years of experience our organization has witnessed how education is a catalyst to action. We look forward to working with our partners across the state to foster a new generation of environmental stewards and are grateful EPA makes these efforts possible.” 

The Groundwater Foundation is a nonprofit organization that seeks to educate the public about the need to conserve and protect groundwater. Surface water or ground water can serve as sources of drinking water. Protecting source water from contamination can reduce treatment costs, and risks to public health from exposures to contaminated water.

For more information about the Recharging Groundwater Education project, contact us at info@groundwater.org or 402-434-2740.

It’s Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {Awesome Aquifer Kit: Improperly Managed Landfill}

This week in Frannie’s exploration of the Awesome Aquifer Kit is all about why you should care what goes into your landfill.

 

We all know how to pick up litter and throw it away properly, but where does our trash go and how is it taken care of after the garbage truck drives away?

That’s right! The landfill!

All of the gross things we don’t want near are homes are going to a landfill.  When it rains, the water infiltrates the landfill.  In other words, it filters down through all the layers of trash to reach the earth.  Once the water has trickled down through all that trash, it starts to look and smell like a garbage soup.  Scientists call this soup “leachate”.

Leachate then seeps down into the ground where it can interact with our groundwater, the same water we pull from our wells to drink and use in preparing our food.  If we are not careful of what we put in the trash or if the operators of the landfill are not careful to check the garbage trucks for harmful and toxic items, then our wells are in danger of critical pollution.

Luckily, there are special landfills for dangerous chemicals.  These can be underground storage tanks, septic systems, or recycling plants that treat or transform toxic trash until it is useable again.  You can help at home by doing more recycling, even for items like broken electronics, batteries and light bulbs!

You can learn more about landfills here and visit your local landfill to see what they are doing to keep your ground and groundwater safe.

It’s Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {Awesome Aquifer Kit: Sinkholes}

This week in Frannie’s exploration of the Awesome Aquifer Kit is about sinkholes and how they are formed.

A sinkhole is a hole in the ground caused by the erosion of the soil or bedrock underneath.  They occur when acidic water seeps down and percolates through soluble, or easily dissolved, layers of soil like sandstone, chalk, or limestone.  Over hundreds or thousands of years, more of the rock dissolves while loose soil and sand shifts down to fill the cracks.  For a long time, the land is able to hold its own weight and even the weight of buildings constructed on top of it.  However, as even more of the rock dissolves and becomes empty space, the land becomes too heavy and will collapse suddenly.

For this activity, you will need a pitcher of warm water, sand,
a piece of paper, a cup with a small-medium size hole,
a coffee filter, scissors, and sugar or powdered creamer.

To observe this in our aquifer kits, we’ll start by collecting our materials: a cup, sand, sugar, a paper tube, a pair of scissors, and a coffee filter or sponge.

Frannie starts by cutting a small hole, the same width as the tube, in the bottom of the cup and placing the coffee filter on top of it, keeping it in place with just a little bit of sand.

Next, she puts her tube over the coffee filter and fills the tube a part of the way with sugar.  The sugar represents the soluble rock that will dissolve when the ground gets wet.  While the tube is still in the cup, she pours in the sand so that it comes to about the same height as the sugar.  The sand represents the rest of the ground and will hold the soluble layer in place.

Slowly remove the tube without disturbing the sand or sugar too much and then pour more sand on top, just enough so that none of the sugar is showing.  Carefully pick up the cup and place the bottom into the water and in just a few moments, the water will infiltrate the sand and sugar, dissolving the sugar and creating our sinkhole.

Check out this cool graphic to see what's happening inside the cup!

Graphic by PBS

It’s Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {Awesome Aquifer Kit: Discover Porosity}

This week in Frannie’s exploration of the Awesome Aquifer Kit is all about discovering the key concept of porosity.

For this activity, you 'll need sand, gravel, a syringe, a small cup, water,
 and a towel.  Frannie predicts that gravel is more porous than sand.

Porosity, in hydrogeology, is the capacity of rock, sand, soil, or other sediments to hold water.  We can measure it through the ratio of the volume of empty space in a particular sentiment to the total volume of the sediment.

We’re going to test the porosity of gravel and sand to discover which one is more porous.

First, we’re going to find out the volume of an empty plastic cup by filling up our syringe to the 35 cubic centimeter (cc) line.  Dispense the water from the syringe into the cup until it’s full to the rim.  Subtract the amount of water left in the syringe from the starting amount of 35cc and record this value.  Frannie found that her cup holds 30 cc.

Empty and dry the cup and then fill it with dry gravel. Fill the syringe again with 35 cc and dispense that water into the cup with gravel.  Subtract the amount left in the syringe from the starting amount of 35cc and record this value.  Frannie found that the cup with gravel holds 17 cc of water.

Empty and dry your cup before filling it with sand. Next fill the syringe with 35 ccs and dispense that water into the cup.  Subtract the amount left in the syringe from the starting amount of 35cc and record this value.   Frannie’s cup with sand holds 12 cc of water.

Fannie discovered that the gravel is able to hold more water and is more porous than sand.

To find the porosity of each material, we first have to determine the volume of material in each cup.  The volume of the sand or gravel in the cup will be equal to the volume of the water the cup can hold when full.  So the volume of our gravel and sand is 30 cc.

Remember that porosity is just the ratio of empty space over sediment so our porosity for gravel is p=17 cc/35 cc = .48 = 48%

Our experimentally determined porosity for sand is p=12 cc/35 cc = .34 = 34%

Frannie was right! Gravel is more
porous than sand!

It’s Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {Awesome Aquifer Kit: Clean it up!}

This week in Frannie’s exploration of the Awesome AquiferKit is all about ways we can clean up the groundwater after it’s been contaminated.

For this activity, you will need pre-rinsed activated
charcoal, a small plastic cup, plastic wrap, a coffee filter,
a rubber band,and your cup of polluted water.

Just like we talked about last time, when we aren’t careful about which chemicals we use, how much of them we use, or how we dispose of them when we’re done, we can end up polluting a large area.  Often, it’s possible to clean up or treat the water so that it becomes safe again. We call this process remediation.  Let’s look at some ways we can remediate contaminated groundwater.

Remember that colored contaminated groundwater we set aside last time?  We’ll be using that now.  To start, we’ll fill a small plastic cup halfway full with charcoal.  Before we used this charcoal, we rinsed it with cool water and then let it completely dry to remove excess dust.

Fill the syringe with some of our colored water and dispense it into the charcoal cup, filling it about 3/4 full.  We’ll make a lid for our cup by cutting a small piece of plastic cling wrap so that it fits over the top of the cup and we’ll wrap it with a rubber band so it stays in place.  Shake the cup for 30-60 seconds and then remove the plastic wrap.

     

First shake...

...then strain.

Now we’ll make a second lid from a coffee filter and secure it with the rubber band again.  We flip the cup upside down and let the water, now mostly clean, pour out into a new cup.  You might need to repeat this step a couple times to clear all of the water of charcoal dust.  When we take water out of the water cycle to treat it, it’s called ex-situ remediation.  If we were to put something into the ground to clean and treat the water, that would be called in-situ remediation.

It's Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {Awesome Aquifer Kit: Groundwater and Surface Water’s Connection}

The Groundwater Foundation has many useful tools to help show how everything we do affects groundwater and how groundwater affects everything we do.  One of Frannie’s favorite tools is the Awesome Aquifer Kit, which lets her get a closer look at what happens to water when it’s deep in the ground.  In this series, Frannie will show us how to use the Awesome Aquifer Kit and what it means in our lives.

This week in Frannie’s exploration of the Awesome Aquifer Kit is all about groundwater and surface water interactions.

First, we have to set up our aquifer by pouring gravel into a clear container and spreading it out evenly.  The gravel represents the land and an unconfined aquifer.  An unconfined aquifer is groundwater that is below porous material like soil, sand, and gravel.

The gravel is flat and we have already added some water to our container.
We'll be using the syringe next time!

Let’s start by slowly pouring water near a wall of the container.  Watch as it infiltrates, or flows from the surface into the ground, and fills th

e spaces between the rocks of the whole container.  Stop pouring when about half of the gravel is saturated.  We can imagine that the pouring water is rain and we are recharging, or refilling, our aquifer.

Do you see that line in the gravel where the water stops? That’s the water table.  The water table is the top of the groundwater and it separates the saturated zone, which is completely full of water, from the unsaturated zone, which as little or no water.

Next, let’s scoop some of the gravel to the side of the container to create a lake.  Surface water is the water that’s above the surface of the land, including lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, and runoff.

The top of the blue line is out water table.
When we add water to the top of our hill, the
water table goes up and fills our lake even more.

We can slowly add some more water, first at the wall close to our hill and second at the wall close to the lake.  Watch the water percolate through the gravel and become groundwater.  The level of the water in the ground rises, but so does the level of water in the lake.  That’s because the groundwater discharges, or flows out, into the lake.

When we add water to the lake, the water table also rises.  When groundwater is located close enough to surface water to be recharged by it, then we can say that the groundwater is under the direct influence of surface water.

It's Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {Holiday Upcycling: Coffee Can Decor}

Frannie was bummed that her favorite coffee containers were not recyclable. So she decided to upcycle them instead! There are so many different ways to use an upcycled coffee container. Frannie could make a vase, a storage place for pens and pencils, some lovely holiday decor, or even a cute container to wrap gifts in! This week Frannie is going to show you how to upcycle a coffee container!

Want to learn why Frannie is doing an upcycling project this week? Check out the Upcycled Clothing Pin Snowflake Ornament blog here.

Here's what you need:

• A coffee can
• Scissors
• Glue
• Craft supplies: ribbon, paint, sequins, glitter, stickers, etc.

Here's what you do:
1. Find an empty coffee can. You can choose to keep the lid or recycle the lid if possible. Frannie decided to recycle her lid since she won't be using it.

2. Decorate your coffee can! Use whatever craft supplies you have to decorate your coffee can. Frannie wrapped some string around her can to create a neat effect.

3. Once you like the way your coffee can looks, you are done! Congratulations! Go ahead and re-purpose your can as a vase, holiday decoration, storage container, or whatever you like like!

For more fun!
Add labels! Decorate several coffee cans and add a label to each describing what item you wish to store inside them.

Share photos of your upcycled coffee can decor here!

Frannie wishes you a fun and safe holiday season!