Education: The Carbon Question
Preliminary Carbon Investigations and Training
Investigation 1: Preparing a Scientific Presentation: What Do We Know About Carbon?
Guiding Question: Why is carbon a fundamental element of life?
One of the first steps in research is to learn what is known about the problem you are studying. Using this information as a background, you can develop a scientific argument or justification to support the importance of the research you would like to do. Do the necessary library and Internet investigation and write a paper or develop a PowerPoint presentation based what you learn about the following questions:
- What is the role of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas on Earth?
- What are the sources of carbon dioxide?
- How is carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere and where does it go?
- How does carbon get stored in plants and trees?
- How does carbon get stored in soils?
- Is carbon stored in vegetation and soils permanently stored there?
- How might increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide affect climate?
- How might increases in carbon dioxide affect biomes and living organisms?
- What is remote sensing and what does it tell us about carbon?
- What measurements are obtained from carbon flux towers?
- What recent scientific findings are relevant to the missing carbon sink study?