High School Students Conducting Research on Maine’s Critical Snowpack
This winter, teams of Maine high school students trudged through harsh conditions to measure snow depths at different sites around the state. It wasn’t a typical science class exercise. The students and their teachers were engaged in serious research, scientific inquiries that could have real impact in the state.
Guided by their teachers, the students from Old Town High School and Bangor High School studied the nature of snowpack, snowfall and timing of snowmelt in Maine’s various climate zones.
The data are of real value to scientists since they have no snow depth/snowmelt information for large swaths of the state. Funding for this project was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Researchers from the Senator George J. Mitchell Center at UMaine, UMaine’s Climate Change Institute and the Schoodic Education and Research Center (SERC) partnered on the study. Students presented early results of their fieldwork on May 8 at the Acadia Learning Student Research Symposium held at the Mitchell Center. See more on this story…