2013 Geographically FIT Forestry Institute for Teachers August 5-8, 2013

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1 2013 Geographically FIT Forestry Institute for Teachers August 5-8, 2013 FINAL REPORT A total of 38 participants took part in the 2013 Geographically FIT (Forestry Institute for Teachers), which was a broad-learning experience covering four days in west central North Dakota. The North Dakota Forest Service and North Dakota Geographic Alliance partnered to deliver their sixth Geographically FIT (Forestry Institute for Teachers) in Participants toured the west central section of the state. The four-day traveling tour began at the high school in Hazen with an overview, completion of credit forms, and distribution of National Geographic teacher resources by Marilyn Weiser, teacher of record and director of the ND Geographic Alliance. Glenda Fauske, Information and Education Coordinator, ND Forest Service, presented a Project Learning Tree (PLT) overview and distributed the curriculum books. Jeannie Sovak, Jim Hill Middle School at Minot, ND, engaged participants in their first journaling assignment. They This workshop was made possible by the North Dakota Geographic Alliance and North Dakota Forest Service, with additional grant funds from the National Geographic Society Education Foundation, State of North Dakota, and US Forest Service-NRCE. 1

2 did descriptive, reflective and personal writing throughout the week expressing their feelings and thoughts as they encountered specific landscapes. Dr. Clark Markell, Minot State University (retired), gave an overview of how geology impacted the geography of North Dakota throughout time to create natural regions and their forests. This professional development opportunity enabled the participating educators an opportunity to expand their content knowledge of North Dakota, and provided them resources for curriculum planning and development. After the opening morning sessions at the Hazen High School, the participants loaded their luggage and stepped into their classroom on wheels and headed for the old school at Riverdale, ND, which was recently converted into a hotel, bar and grill. Following our noon lunch, the first stop was the Garrison Dam. The standard of living of various people throughout the world depends on environmental quality, and the availability, use and distribution of resources. Resource management and technological systems help to meet, within limits, the needs of a growing human population. The site visits made this afternoon helped participants understand the difference between renewable and nonrenewable resources, and the factors that make a renewable resource sustainable. Garrison Dam is an earth-fill embankment dam on the Missouri River in central North Dakota. At over two miles (3 km) in length, it is the fifth-largest earthen dam in the world, constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from The reservoir, impounded by the dam, is Lake Sakakawea that has more shoreline than the coast of California. Hydropower turbines at Garrison Dam have an electric power generating nameplate capacity of megawatts. Average production of 240 megawatts serves several hundred thousand customers. The construction on the dam necessitated the purchase of 152,360 acres (616.6 km 2 ) in the Fort Berthold Reservation that would be flooded by the creation of Lake Sakakawea. These lands were owned by the Three Affiliated Tribes and were sold in 1947 for $5,105,625 and ~1,700 residents relocated. Construction on the $300 million dam project began in 1947, and its embankment was enclosed in April The dam was dedicated by President Eisenhower two months later. Earthwork was completed in the fall of 1954 by the Corps of Engineers as part of a flood control and power generation project along the river. Our second stop was next door at the Garrison Dam National Fish Hatchery. The Hatchery plays a key role in providing quality fishing opportunities throughout the Great Plains Region, and in restoring the endangered pallid sturgeon in its northern range. This Federal hatchery is challenged with meeting fish stocking requests from several states, providing in excess of 10 million native fish annually for restoration stockings or balancing fish populations in hundreds of waters. Teachers got to see a very rare, albino pallid sturgeon, a prehistoric fish in danger, at the National Fish Hatchery. Garrison Dam in central North Dakota is two miles long. Garrison Dam Fish Hatchery produces in excess of 25 tons of trout and salmon annually for stocking into North Dakota waters as well. State game and fish 2

3 agencies in several states such as North Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho and Nevada do not operate hatcheries for cool water fish species such as walleye and pike, and rely on this facility to produce these species. The final stop for the first day was at Fort Stevenson State Park along Lake Sakakawea. Fort Stevenson State Park takes its name from a 19th century frontier military fort. The fort was named in honor of Brigadier General Thomas Greeley Stevenson, a Union officer who was killed on May 10, 1864, during the Battle of Spotsylvania (VA), one of the costliest of all Civil War battles. The original site of the fort, now underwater, was located on the north bank of the Missouri River between Douglas and Garrison creeks, about two miles southwest of the present park site. By 1867, the year Fort Stevenson was established, traffic on the Missouri River was at its peak. Trading posts sent packets of furs-- beaver and buffalo hides--downstream to St. Louis. In 1863, gold was discovered at Alder Gulch in Montana. Steamboats plied the river, bringing supplies to miners prospecting in the Virginia City gold fields. Fort Stevenson was envisioned as one of a chain of forts that were to be built to guard the emigrant route from Minnesota to the gold mines of Montana and Idaho. It was to provide military protection from the Sioux for the peaceful Mandan, Arikara and Hidatsa tribes at Fort Berthold. It was also to serve as an intermediate point for the mail routes that extended from Fort Rice to Fort Buford, and from Fort Benton to Fort Totten. Finally, and what became the primary function of Fort Stevenson, was that of a supply base for Fort Totten, 126 miles to the east. The first evening was spent in the town of Garrison, ND, and ended with a delicious evening meal at the hotel from Kyle s Katering. Dirt piles from the Custer coal stripped mine were turned into a wildlife habitat site. The second day, we stopped briefly at the historic Custer Coal Mine site to view the landscape of a mining area where the land was not reclaimed to its natural aesthetic state once the coal was extracted. Dr. Clark Markell explained how the structure and scale of an ecosystem are influenced by factors such as soil type, climate, water and human activities. Management technologies, such as reclamation, can restore the land to usefulness and the quality of the environment. The rest of the morning was spent at Lake Audubon Wildlife Refuge. Jackie Jacobson, Visitor Center Manager, welcomed the educators to the Audubon National Wildlife Refuge and increased their knowledge of migratory birds, endangered species, prairie wetlands, grassland habitat, and habitat management methods. Teachers view a painting of the original Fort Stevenson and many of the returned original artifacts from the fort. A demonstration of how they are capturing and banding doves was given. Then, we drove a portion of their auto tour route and stopped at a site to talk about how management techniques, such as livestock grazing and prescribed burning, improve habitat. Discussing prescribed burning benefits at Audubon Refuge. 3

4 Jacobson concluded our visit with a tour of their LEED, Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, Center. LEED is transforming the way we think about how buildings and communities are designed, constructed, maintained and operated. Comprehensive and flexible, LEED is a green building tool that addresses the entire building lifecycle recognizing best-in-class building strategies. Right now, the Audubon Center is one of only a few gold certified LEED buildings in North Dakota! After our noon lunch, we headed the bus towards the Knife River Indian Villages near Stanton, ND. Here patterns of change could be observed in human uses of natural resources. Human attitudes and values, and therefore behavior, with regard to the environment also changed over the course of generations. Participants had a chance to express their own views about the changes and issues in their journaling exercises along the trip. Park Ranger Wall explains all the items made from local resources in an earthlodge. Tom Wall and staff helped us explore the lives of the Northern Plains Indians on the Upper Missouri. The earthlodge people hunted bison and other game, but were in essence farmers living in villages along the Missouri and its tributaries. The site was a major Native American trade center for hundreds of years prior to becoming an important market place for fur traders after Few figures in American history have attained legendary status like Sacagawea, the "Bird Woman." Despite her popularity, little is actually known about her life. What is clear is that her time living at the Knife River Villages in North Dakota proved fortuitous with the 1804 arrival of the Corps of Discovery led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. It was while living at the Awatixa Village (or Sakakawea Village) that Lewis and Clark hired Charbonneau and his wife Sacagawea for their trip. Our second day concluded back at Hazen, ND. Participants were on their own for their evening and meal. The third day started out at the Lewis and Clark Center and Fort Mandan. Throughout the history of the United States, society s attitudes towards the environment have evolved. The writings of different authors influenced their contemporaries attitudes at the time and reflect the view of their time periods. Early on, people with vision, such as Thomas Jefferson, were concerned about natural resources. People s personal experiences and place in history affect their attitudes toward the environment. Everything you've ever wanted to know about the Corps of Discovery, from the technology they used to the Native nations they encountered, to the geography of their journey was found at the Interpretive Center. Aside from all the amazing artifacts and journals from the expedition, the maps alone showed how much geography Clark learned from the Indians, former travelers to the West, and how much he learned on the ground himself. For all the "mistakes," by 21st-century standards, Clark's maps showed his extraordinary ability to observe and remember details. He had a capacity for geographic memory and imagination that other travelers and explorers relied upon for the next fifty years. Captain Clark s map of the Midwest. 4

5 One of the highlights at this stop was having Jeff Carlson share a special session on the birds documented and discovered along the way. Participants were challenged to identify local species by sight and sound. There were some real bird brains in the group, as some of the teachers were well versed in our local wildfowl. Dr. Zeleznik spends the afternoon talking about forests, disturbances and management decisions. The afternoon was spent at Cross Ranch State Park with Dr. Joseph Zeleznik, NDSU extension forester. Participants learned some interesting and exciting history about North Dakota s native forests. Their distribution and structure have been shaped by ecological disturbances such as fire and flooding. Management decisions in the 20 th century have drastically reduced the intensity and return interval of those disturbances, resulting in ecosystems that are very different today than those of pre-settlement times. Some remnant forests remain, but they are dwindling. His presentations and activities explored the consequences of those management decisions. He used dendrochronology (tree ring analysis) and estimates of tree biomass to further develop those concepts. He engaged the participants in a variety of Project Learning Tree activities, such as Tree Factory, Tree Cookies, Looking at Leaves, Name That Tree and Signs of Fall. Sovak closed out the day with a reflective journaling activity. The group spent a second night in Hazen, ND. Our last day began at the Great Plains Synfuels Plant. North Dakota leads the nation in being an energy provider state. Our state is blessed with an abundance of coal, wind, oil, natural gas and water energy. Resource management technologies interact and influence environmental quality; the acquisition, extraction and transportation of natural resources; all life forms; and each other. Participants discussed the pros and cons of various energy sources from economic, social and environmental perspectives. Aerial view of Synfuels Plant near Beulah, ND. The Synfuels Plant is the only commercial-scale coal gasification plant in the United States that manufactures natural gas. Average daily production of natural gas is about 153 million cubic feet, the majority of which is piped to Ventura, IA, for distribution in the eastern United States. The Synfuels Plant supplies carbon dioxide to the world s largest carbon capture and storage project in the world in Saskatchewan, Canada. Dakota Gas currently captures between 2.5 and 3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Our final field trip was to the Coteau Freedom Mine. Each participant experienced a personal view of the various sources of one of our natural resources (coal), as well as a description of the processes by which it is turned into products, the energy needed to make the products we use, and how the resources used could be conserved. The Coteau Properties Company, a subsidiary of The North American Coal Corporation, was formed in Coteau owns and operates the Freedom Mine, named to highlight the important role it plays in securing 5

6 America s freedom from dependence on foreign energy sources. The mine in Beulah, North Dakota delivers approximately 15 million tons of coal per year, making it the largest lignite mine in the United States in deliveries. The operation utilizes three draglines for overburden removal, and reclaims about 600 acres of land annually. Huge electric shovels remove the overburden to reach the coal. Here are some of the hard coal facts: 95% of North Dakota s electricity is generated by coal; North Dakota has 25 billion tons of lignite reserves enough to last 800 years at today s rate of use; North Dakota is one of only 15 states in the nation to meet all of the Environmental Protection Agency s stringent ambient air quality standards; Annual lignite industry expenditures are greater than $500 million, generating over $74 million in state tax revenue and creating more than 20,000 jobs; and Since 1970 the U.S. population has grown 40%, coal use for electricity has increased 188%. The workshop wound up back at Hazen High School for a Taco Bar noon lunch followed by some debriefing, a post-test, and the completion of a participation survey. It was a great week with wonderful weather for the 38 participants and instructors. Another GeoFIT tour is being planned for 2014, either somewhere in western North Dakota oil country or a joint workshop with Minnesota. For more information, contact: Glenda.Fauske@ndsu.edu or Marilyn.Weiser@minotstateu.edu. 6