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A Growing Town and Its Creek

Grade 8 argument practice: town water records, creek tests and cleanup data show how population growth and resource use change a watershed.

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
12 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 analyze data to show how population and use per person together set total resource use.
Students argue from evidence that growth in a town changes the hydrosphere, geosphere and biosphere of a watershed.

How to use

Read the passage and both tables together, then have students mark which numbers describe people and which describe the creek before they answer.

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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Name Date

A Growing Town and Its Creek

Use town records, creek tests and cleanup data to argue how growth affects Earth's systems.

Town growth and water use

Read the passage and the town records, then answer the questions.

What Changed Along Millbrook Creek?

Every April, Anaya Whitfield's eighth-grade class joins a cleanup of Millbrook Creek, which flows through the town of Millbrook before it joins a larger river. The creek's watershed is all the land that drains into it. Rain that falls on yards, roads and roofs in town flows downhill into the creek, either over the ground or through storm drains. The town also pumps its drinking water from wells and a reservoir in the same watershed.

This year the class wanted to know whether the town's growth has changed the creek. Their teacher, Mr. Castellanos, helped them gather records from the town water department, county maps and a volunteer group that has tested the creek for decades. The class chose three years to compare: 1980, 2000 and 2020. Census records give the population. Water meters show how much water the town pumps each day, and dividing that by the population gives the use per person. On county maps, students measured the share of the watershed covered by paved roads, parking lots and roofs, surfaces that rain cannot soak into.

Each July, the volunteers test the creek at the same spot below town. They measure nitrate, a nutrient that washes off fertilized lawns and fields and also comes from wastewater. High nitrate can feed algae blooms that use up the oxygen fish need. They also count mayfly larvae in a one-minute net sample. Mayfly larvae are young insects that live on the creek bottom, and most kinds survive only in clean water with plenty of oxygen.

On cleanup day, 30 students worked along a 1-kilometer stretch of the creek for three hours. They sorted and counted every item they picked up. Most of it had washed in from streets and parking lots after storms, and many bottles and bags were caught in branches just below the storm drain outlets.

Back in class, Anaya noticed something puzzling. "Each person in Millbrook uses less water than people did in 1980," she said. "So why is the town pumping more?" Her lab partner, Jonah Pettibone, pointed to a town rule from 2015: new parking lots must include rain gardens, shallow planted dips that soak up runoff before it reaches the creek.