Problem-Based Learning – Fracking and the Marcellus Shale

The Earth System Science (ESS) module Fracking – Marcellus Shale from the Earth System Science Education Alliance (ESSEA) is a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) activity designed to introduce your students to a current environmental issue and explore it using ESS’s Earth System Science Analysis (ESSA).  The ESSA approach asks students to examine how the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere 1) are impacted by the issue; 2) affect the issue; and 3) affect each other.

The module contains an extensive list of high quality resources pertaining to fracking along with a compilation of suggested activities appropriate for a range of learners, from beginners to advanced.

To learn more about using ESS modules in the K-12 classroom, click here.

If you have used this resource with your students, please leave a comment!

Hydraulic Fracturing Poster from Department of Energy

This educational poster (pdf) from the US Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy diagrams the process of hydraulic fracturing to extract shale gas from deep beneath the earth. According to their website, hard copies of this poster are available for educators.

EIA’s New Interactive Maps: State Energy Portal

According to the the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), its state energy portal is “the most comprehensive, dynamic, and interactive view of the U.S. government’s national and state energy data and information currently available to the public.”

The profile/map for NC can be found here. By clicking on the “Layers/Legend” tab and selecting one of five available base maps, educators can customize maps and charts for classroom use. Maps can be created to show availability of energy sources, transmission lines, major power plants as well as renewable energy potential for North Carolina.  Electricity, nuclear, natural gas and renewable energy profiles for the state are also available along with supporting data tables in Microsoft Excel. Also, by clicking on a specific power plant, the portal links users directly to that plant’s data in EIA’s electricity data browser (see corresponding blog post).

This tool also shows how NC ranks in comparison to the other 49 states in terms of energy production, consumption, prices for electricity and natural gas, and carbon dioxide emissions.

Methane Hydrate Resources from NETL and USGS

The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL)  has an information portal for the National Methane Hydrate R&D Program.  There is a link to 24 page primer titled, Energy Resource Potential for Methane Hydrate (pdf) and a description of all active and completed research projects.

The USGS’s Woods Hole Science Center also has an extensive page devoted to gas hydrates. Here you can learn about The U.S. Geological Survey Gas Hydrates Project, learn about climate-hydrate interactions, and find links to recent scientific publications and multi-media coverage.

(Image: USGS)

Methane Hydrate Resources

Methane hydrates have been in the news lately after Japan announced in March that it had extracted natural gas from deep in the ocean floor!  The source of the natural gas was methane hydrates, or methane molecules trapped in ice crystals.  In reading a recent National Geographic article, I learned that “methane hydrates buried beneath the seafloor on continental shelves and under the Arctic permafrost are likely the world’s largest store of carbon-based fuel. The figure often cited, 700,000 trillion cubic feet of methane trapped in hydrates, is a staggering sum that would exceed the energy content of all oil, coal, and other natural gas reserves known on Earth.”  Wow.

Below are links to resources about methane hydrates:

National Geographic: Pictures: Unlocking Icy Methane Hydrates, a Vast Energy Store, an excellent collection of photos with accompanying narrative

NASA: Methane: A Scientific Journey from Obscurity to Climate Super-Stardom

Department of Energy: Methane Hydrates

The Green Grok: Methane Hydrates: The Next Natural Gas Boom?

ChokePoint US: Energy Used in the Water Cycle

I recently learned about a project from Circle of Blue called ChokePoint: US, a four-month reporting project where journalists set out to better understand what is occurring in the places where rising energy demand collides with diminishing supplies of fresh water.  Check out the website for featured stories, multimedia and infographics about hydropower, coal, oil, tar sands, fracking, and renewables.

Check out the interactive infographic titled: Energy Used in the Water Cycle that details the amount of electricity that is needed to transport, distribute and treat the water we use in our homes and businesses as well as the industrial and agricultural sectors.  While electricity plays a role in many steps of this water cycle, most electricity use occurs with the end users – customers who heat water to bathe, cook, etc.

For those of you who take your students on tours of water treatment plants or waste water treatment plants, consider asking the plant operators to discuss the plant’s use of electricity to pump, move and treat water.

 

Electricity data browser from EIA

The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently posted an electricity data browser to show generation, consumption, fossil fuel receipts, stockpiles, retail sales, and electricity prices. The data appear on an interactive web page and are updated each month; annual, quarterly and monthly data are available from 2001-2011. All images and datasets are available for download.  Furthermore, data sets can be filtered by fuel type, geographic region or state, or energy sector, enabling you to customize data sets and graphs for your state or region.

I encourage you to check out this tool to get up to date US energy data and to create customized graphs for use in the classroom. For example, this tool can be used to quickly get data and corresponding graphs to answer a variety of questions such as:

How much of NC’s electricity generation comes from biomass? natural gas? coal?

How does NC’s consumption of biomass compare the US as a whole?

How has NC’s consumption of natural gas changed since 2001?

Which region of the US is generating the most electricity from natural gas?

Burn: An Energy Journal

BURN: An Energy Journal is the flagship program of The Public Radio Energy Project and winner of the 2012 American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) Kavli Science Journalism Award for their documentary special titled Particles: Nuclear Power After Fukushima (54 minutes in 3 segments) that examines the future of nuclear power one year after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan..

Two other documentaries are available, The Hunt for Oil: Risks  and Rewards and The Power of One a two hour special that includes segments on fracking in Pennsylvania, drilling for oil in the Arctic and the quest to build better batteries.

USGS Releases Assessment of Eastern Basins for Oil and Gas Content

On June 5, 2012, the US Geological Survey (USGS) released a two page fact sheet (pdf) titled Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas Resources of the East Coast Mesozoic Basins of the Piedmont, Blue Ridge Thrust Belt, Atlantic Coastal Plain, and New England Provinces, 2011.  The assessment estimates the mean amount of  technically recoverable, undiscovered natural gas resources in NC’s Deep River Basina to be 1,660 billion cubic feet of gas and 83 million barrels of natural gas liquids. The assessment concludes that “of the five basins that were quantitatively assessed, the Deep River, Taylorsville, and South Newark basins appear to possess the potential to produce the most hydrocarbons.”

According to Dr. Kenneth Taylor, chief of the N.C. Geological Survey, in today’s press release from the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources (NCDENR), the USGS mean estimate of 1.66 trillion cubic feet for natural gas could meet the state’s natural gas demand for 5.6 years, based on the 2010 average daily natural gas consumption volume in North Carolina of 811 million cubic feet per day.

For more information visit: http://energy.usgs.gov

 

 

A Primer on Modern Shale Gas Development

This 2009 publication was prepared for the US Department of Energy (DOE) by the Groundwater Protection Council.  According to the DOE website, this primer “underscores technology advances and challenges of shale gas development” and cites that “addressing water issues [is] key to increasing U.S. shale gas production.” Forty-two graphics, figures and photos can be found throughout this report which describes the nation’s major gas shale basins (Barnett, Fayetteville, Haynesville, Marcellus, Woodford, Antrim, New Albany) including the stratigraphy of each. The primer also includes a discussion of the regulatory framework in place for shale gas development as well as environmental considerations needed to reduce impacts to human health and the environment.