HR: 1330h
AN: ED22C-1242    [PDF]
TI: The GLOBE Soil Moisture Campaign and SMEX03: Making it Real for Teachers
AU: * Whitaker, M P
EM: mplw@hwr.arizona.edu
AF: The University of Arizona Dept. of Hydrology \& Water Resources, PO Box 210011 JW Harshbarger Building, \#11, Tucson, AZ 85721-0011 United States
AU: Washburne, J
EM: jwash@hwr.arizona.edu
AF: The University of Arizona Dept. of Hydrology \& Water Resources, PO Box 210011 JW Harshbarger Building, \#11, Tucson, AZ 85721-0011 United States
AU: Ferre, T P
EM: ty@hwr.arizona.edu
AF: The University of Arizona Dept. of Hydrology \& Water Resources, PO Box 210011 JW Harshbarger Building, \#11, Tucson, AZ 85721-0011 United States
AU: Nijssen, B
EM: nijssen@email.arizona.edu
AF: The University of Arizona Dept. of Hydrology \& Water Resources, PO Box 210011 JW Harshbarger Building, \#11, Tucson, AZ 85721-0011 United States
AU: Nijssen, B
EM: nijssen@email.arizona.edu
AF: The University of Arizona, Dept. of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Tucson, AZ 85721 United States
AB: The GLOBE Soil Moisture Campaign (SMC) (http://www.hwr.arizona.edu/globe/sci/SM/SMC) is an effort to mobilize students worldwide to collect near-surface (i.e. 0-5 cm and 8-12 cm deep) gravimetric soil moisture data twice a year: once during World Space Week/U.S Earth Science Week (early October) and again during Earth Day Week (mid-April). As part of our teacher-training and recruitment strategy, the SMC actively seeks event-oriented scientific campaigns, with which to collaborate and make the science relevant and "real" for the teachers and, subsequently, their students. One specific success has been the SMC collaboration with the Soil Moisture Experiment 2003 (SMEX03) that took place in June-July in Georgia and Alabama. SMEX03 was a soil moisture data collection campaign whose objectives were to collect soil moisture in a large-scale field experiment that used ground, aircraft and spacecraft observations over multiple field sites during the summer of 2003. The GLOBE SMC participated in SMEX03 by collaborating with a GLOBE soils training workshop in Huntsville, AL that was scheduled for dates and locations that overlapped with SMEX03. Fifty teachers were trained in the SMC soil moisture protocol, and were asked to collect soil moisture samples at or near their homes in the communities surrounding Huntsville. Of the fifty teachers, 41 returned with soil samples that were ultimately submitted for use in the SMEX03 campaign. The training workshop's collaboration with SMEX03 proved a successful means of hands-on training with an immediate connection between schools and scientists. An analysis of the teacher-collected soil moisture data used in SMEX03 will be presented, along with a discussion of the specific successes of the SMC involvement.
DE: 1640 Remote sensing
DE: 1866 Soil moisture
DE: 6605 Education
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting