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Before Storm Season: Marsh, Dunes and Salty Wells in a Growing Beach Town

Grade 8 argument practice: a beach town's water, salty well and land-cover records show how more people and more use per person change marsh, dunes and groundwater.

Grade 8ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned toMS-ESS3-4

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 NGSS standard
Printable answer key
11 questions
Classroom-ready

Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 8
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students separate the effects of population growth and use per person on a town's total water pumping.
Students analyze land-cover and groundwater data to show how growth changes the geosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere.
Students construct an evidence-based argument about a proposed development.

How to use

Read the passage as a class and talk about how fresh and salty groundwater sit under a beach town, then let students work alone; calculators help with the totals and percents.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

MS-ESS3-4

Argue how growth in human population and resource use affects Earth's systems.

Preview

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Before Storm Season: Marsh, Dunes and Salty Wells in a Growing Beach Town

Use town records to argue how growth and use per person change Earth's systems.

Part 1: Water from the wells

Read the passage and Table 1, then answer questions 1–6.

The Dune Road Vote

1Every September, before storm season, the town council of Bayberry Point holds a public meeting about how ready the town is for hurricanes and winter storms. This year one item drew a crowd. A builder wants to put 400 new homes on Dune Road, on the last open stretch of dunes and marsh edge on the bay side of town. Eighth grader Soraya Lindgren's science class offered to gather town records so that residents could look at the facts before the council votes.

2The class learned that all of the town's drinking water comes from wells that pump fresh groundwater out of the sandy ground. Under the town, the fresh groundwater rests on top of salty groundwater that seeps in from the ocean, because fresh water is less dense than salt water. The town measures chloride, the main part of sea salt, in Well 3, the well closest to the bay. Water with 250 mg/L of chloride or more tastes salty to many people, and the town would then have to stop using the well or pay to treat its water.

3The class also measured land cover on aerial photos taken every 15 years. Salt marsh is a wetland of grasses that high tides flood, often twice a day. Marsh grass slows storm waves and traps mud, and many young fish, crabs and shorebirds feed and shelter in it. Dunes are hills of sand held in place by beach grass; they block storm waves and store sand that storms move. Over the years, parts of the marsh were filled with sand and gravel to make land for a marina, houses and roads, and some dunes were bulldozed flat for parking lots and beach houses.

4The Dune Road plan would fill 12 ha of marsh edge and level 6 ha of dunes. The builder expects about 2.5 people to live in each new home. Some residents worry about the town's water and about losing storm protection. Others point out that families who work in town need places to live, and they ask whether the homes could be built in a different way or a different place.