Do Forest Fires or Cars Produce More CO2 Emissions?
Student exemplar of a CO2 emissions posterCopyright Sheyenne High School, West Fargo, ND.
Students act as environmental engineers to solve a problem using carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from cars and wildfires. Wildfires are a timely topic because every year they cause people in many areas to face poor air quality. Students use Microsoft Excel to investigate CO2 emitted from two sources: highway traffic and forest fires. They estimate and graph the CO2 emitted by forest fires and from U.S. highway driving annually from 2004 to 2021. After they analyze these two pieces of data, they analyze a specific fire and evacuation that happened in Saratoga Springs in June 2020, named the Knolls Fire. Finally, using the Excel data and the Knolls Fire data, students decide whether the U.S. should spend money on reducing the number and severity of wildfires, or on reducing CO2 emissions from driving cars. The students design and create a poster based on their decision and present it to the class.
Environmental engineers contribute significantly to the comprehensive management of wildfires, focusing on sustainable and eco-friendly practices to prevent, mitigate, respond to, and recover from these natural disasters. Their work is essential in protecting both human communities and natural ecosystems from the devastating effects of wildfires. Environmental engineers also study air pollution from human sources such as car emissions. They work to identify air pollutants and design transportation that leads to cleaner air to keep people safe and healthy.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Understand units and unit analysis, e.g., miles vs. square miles.
- Graph data and properly label each graph, including units and titles.
- Analyze graphs and data to support arguments.