Create a Safe Pathway for Turtles
The students must solve a real-world phenomenon with constraints. Students follow steps of the engineering design process to design and construct a bridge or some form of crossover to provide a pathway for a turtle to safely cross the road. Students pick a specific turtle species native to their state or region. They research their chosen species to identify its niche and habitat, with a special emphasis on the difference between the turtle’s “normal” location and behaviors and its “nesting grounds”. Often, it is the movement between these two locations that can be lethal to the turtles. The goal of the students is to try and lessen the impact of the highway on turtle populations. Civil engineers and environmental engineers must keep ecosystems stable, while allowing infrastructure to be built and all within a reasonable budget.
It is estimated that turtles only have ~2% chance of successfully crossing busy roads, how can we modify roads to reduce turtle mortality?Copyright 2020 Jonathan Lidbeck, Central Michigan University
Road construction must consider human conveniences and average traffic flow, but also must be mindful to wildlife populations. Roads are being built into more remote locations, as humans want to live within nature. Civil engineers need to build the roads that can safely get them there, while keeping nature itself safe. Engineers must find a balance between efficiency and ethics.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Define problems in wildlife management due to human actions.
- Analyze a conservation problem based on its human and animal considerations.
- Develop solutions to problems based on relevant data and constraints on the problem.
- Build a model of their design.
- Understand the different steps of the engineering design process.