WATER EDUCATION IN THE PIKES PEAK REGION, COLORADO, USA

A special one-week water course is taught twice during the academic school year. The course meets eight hours per day, 80% in the field and 20% in a laboratory. The students are expected to complete all assignments within a month of the end of the course and finish a water project as well. Water plays a very important part in the everyday world and has a special impact upon those who live in the arid west of the United States. By successfully completing the course, students gain a thorough understanding of the complexity of the many water issues facing the citizens of the Pikes Peak region. Students travel to ten locations in the surrounding community to observe measure, investigate, and develop an understanding of water. Detailed investigations of the processes, concepts, and problems that relate to water are all studied. Past and present environments are analyzed by gaining numerical data from the completion of measurements and observations of bedrock, surface materials, vegetation data, and water distribution. Investigations of flooding, erosion, droughts, water-tables, vegetation, and climatic phenomena’s are studied and used to complete the assignments. Locations in the mountains, prairies, along river channels and near open bodies of water, as well as both rural and urban areas are visited. The students use various data banks, collection equipment, and laptop computers to assist them in completing their assignments. A thorough reading list of materials that include information from textbooks, professional articles, and governmental bulletins and papers are used by the students to gain a greater understanding of the subject matter. Some of the topics that are addressed include an engineering analysis of a five square mile drainage basin, past and present hydrologic cycles of differing areas, comparisons of a water system in a river, forest, and wetland environment that are adjacent to each other, wildfire and drought relationships and a gradational agent study of a steep mountain basin. Student evaluations consistently state that the course is responsible for improved observational strategies, improvement in their statistical and mathematical analysis capabilities, and their writing abilities as well as understanding the many complex and interrelated factors of water.