As part of a project funded via the NSF Geoscience and Education, we worked with Jason Cervenec (BPCRC outreach coordinator) and Steven Gordon (Ohio Supercomputer Center), and with Howard Greene (College of Engineering Diversity & Outreach), to help develop a simple curriculum for doing hydrology in high school and middle school. It has some nice hands-on components (e.g. measuring infiltration in a soup can you leave under a sprinkler), tools and ideas for exploring small watersheds, and a simple web-based hydrologic model. The hydrologic model (based on NRCS curve number for runoff, channel slope for time of concentration, and NRCS unit hydrograph for routing) is really just a few lines of code, but allows high school and middle school students to get a feel for how changing land cover might affect streamflow.

The module consists of five units, and are all available for download here. The web-based model is hosted here: both are at BPCRC.

The module was field tested twice in summer 2013 and summer 2014, with significant changes to the hydrologic model made in between the two, in order to better adapt it for classroom settings. Here are a couple of action shots from the workshop: