Module VIII

Essential question:

How are Arctic sea-ice, climate and culture all connected?

Explain and extend: The climate and sea-ice consistency in the Arctic has become very familiar to those cultural members and they have come to rely on the patterns of consistency to help themselves survive, what would be to others a fairly brutal region on our Earth. They were born in the Arctic. They were taught by people who were born in the Arctic, who were also taught by people who were born in the Arctic. They have developed a fascinating and accurate record of the Arctic' climate and sea-ice patterns for as long as they have been living.

They are able to tell that the climate and sea-ice are changing. As more green house gases are being put into our atmosphere, more are being bounced back by the atmosphere causing the Earth to become warmer, which in turn melts more sea-ice. Polar bear are at the top of their food chain, except humans. They teritary consumers because they eat seal. Seal are teritary consumers also, as they eat smaller fish. The smaller fish are the secondary consumer since they phytoplankton which is the bottom of the food change called the producers. In order to have this web of life we need our sun to continue to provide the adequate warmer that all of these animals have become accustom to living within.

If we continue to disregard the signs of global warming that have been recorded by Native cultures and western scientific evidence, the sea-ice could melt, which would increase the temperature of the ocean, which could have an impact on the bottom of the food chain, the producers may not be able to survive and without them the web of life is destroyed. If we were lucky, it might redesign itself. But, the polar bear would not be able to hunt from ice. Their habitat and hunting ground would be gone.

Loss of polar cap ice is concerning because for millions of years our white caps have reflected a certain portion of the sun's rays back into space. Much like the experiment using a heat lamp, water, black and white paper, the polar ice caps are necessary to reflect some of the sun's rays into space in order for the Earth to stay cool and have cooling climate systems. If the ice goes and the oceans are dark, the water will absorb more of the sun's rays, which will inevitably increase temperatures planet wide.

Evaluate: The contents of this module were for a layman scientist, a bit challenging. I needed to have a lab and lab partners to conduct and discuss the experiments in order to help me solidify the concepts.