1 min read

Trash Travels: Connecting Humans’ Impact on Our Ocean World

Trash Travels: Connecting Humans' Impact on Our Ocean World


Elizabeth Joyner, NASA Langley, presented to 47 international educators through a collaboration with NASA's STEM Educator Professional Development Collaborative and EarthEcho International, a leading environmental and ocean education nonprofit organization founded and led by Philippe Cousteau, in a virtual session called "Trash Travels: Connecting Humans' Impact on Our Ocean World" on November 22, 2021. Joyner presented the My NASA Data Ocean Circulation and Garbage Patches storymap and provided a framework for developing students' understanding of the garbage gyres (or garbage patches) using NASA data and visualizations. EarthEcho's Stacy Rafalowski joined Joyner to further explore the impact of plastics on the ocean's biosphere by providing a live shorebird bolus dissection. This dissection revealed a range of plastic fragments logged in an albatross's digestive system and demonstrated the real-world impacts of plastics pollution. The two speakers offered additional curricular resources for engaging students in K12 classroom environments. (Award No. NNX16AC54A)

NASA Garbage Patch Visualization Experiment (top left) sets the stage for understanding plastic distribution via our surface currents and the phenomenon of plastics found in the dissected bird bolus.

Share

Details

Last Updated
Nov 22, 2021
Editor
NASA Science Editorial Team

Related Terms

Explore More

6 min read

NASA’s PACE, US-European SWOT Satellites Offer Combined Look at Ocean

One Earth satellite can see plankton that photosynthesize. The other measures water surface height. Together, their data reveals how sea life and the ocean are intertwined. The ocean is an engine that drives Earth’s weather patterns and climate and sustains a substantial portion of life on the planet. A new animation based on data from […]

Article6 days ago
A group of eleven individuals smiling and posing together in a brightly lit room, with colorful abstract artwork displayed on the wall behind them. One person in the front holds a red plaque or award.
1 min read

Fresh Eyes on Ice Project Wins Award

Article1 week ago
4 min read

NASA’s C-20A Studies Extreme Weather Events

On a changing planet, where phenomena like severe hurricanes, landslides, and wildfires are becoming more severe, scientists need data to assess and model disaster impacts and to potentially make predictions about hazards. NASA’s C-20A aircraft is a significant asset that can carry key instruments for understanding the science behind these phenomena.  Based at NASA’s Armstrong […]

Article2 weeks ago
Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From NASA

James Webb Space Telescope

The image is divided horizontally by an undulating line between a cloudscape forming a nebula along the bottom portion and a comparatively clear upper portion. Speckled across both portions is a starfield, showing innumerable stars of many sizes. The smallest of these are small, distant, and faint points of light. The largest of these appear larger, closer, brighter, and more fully resolved with 8-point diffraction spikes. The upper portion of the image is blueish, and has wispy translucent cloud-like streaks rising from the nebula below. The orangish cloudy formation in the bottom half varies in density and ranges from translucent to opaque. The stars vary in color, the majority of which have a blue or orange hue. The cloud-like structure of the nebula contains ridges, peaks, and valleys – an appearance very similar to a mountain range. Three long diffraction spikes from the top right edge of the image suggest the presence of a large star just out of view.

Perseverance Rover

Parker Solar Probe

Juno