FRAME

Related subject area: Science

Overall problem: Which activities (if any) around the coral reefs of Kailua Bay should be restricted to insure their lasting protection?

Relationship of problem in this lesson to the overall problem: In order to make a recommendation about restricting activities around the coral reefs, students need to learn how to analyze and interpret remote sensing images collected over Kailua Bay. During this lesson, students will develop an understanding of the process of analyzing data and actually analyze various images of coral reefs in the Kailua Bay in order to evaluate their health.

Estimated time required: 2 to 3 class periods

Student outcomes/objectives:

  • Given classification categories, students will be able to interpret coastal features within different remote sensing images.
  • Students will be able to analyze the health of Kailua Bay coral reefs from remote sensing images.

Prerequisite skills or knowledge:

  • Basic Internet skills
  • Basic reading and writing skills

Teacher preparation:

  • Print Student Journal /Activity sheets for these activities.
  • Bookmark appropriate websites for students.
  • It is highly recommended that teachers review the the last lesson, "Collecting data" as they prepare this lesson and review the remote sensing tutorial website in order to gain a basic understanding of remote sensin

Student reflection and assessment: Student reflection activities  |  Assessment

Education standards supported by this lesson:   

National Science Education Standards | Project 2061 Benchmarks

National Standards for School Mathematics | National Technology Standards | National Geography Standards

Cross-curricular connections to National Education Standards for this lesson:

math | technology | geography
Teacher Activities
  
Student Activities

FRAME the lesson by showing the collected AVIRIS images. The mission has already been planned and flown. Now they will review and analyze the data gathered.

Provide students with AVIRIS image and the image of the study area

  • Ask students
    • Where is the location of the larger AVIRIS image?
    • Where is the study area of KaAMS mission?
    • How did we collect these images? Which remote sensing instrument was used? Which aircraft was chosen for collecting these images?

     

Teacher Note:

It may help to show the students the Landsat image (http://www.higp.hawaii.edu/kaams/
lpreef/cr_analyze/image_files/landsat.htm) to help them with locating where exactly the AVIRIS image is.

Prompt students to begin to think about why they need to analyze the data.

  • What is the main problem to be answered in KaAMS mission?
  • Why do we need to analyze the data?

  • What is the state of coral reefs in Kailua Bay? Can you evaluate the state of coral reefs in Kailua Bay with these images?

 

  • How can you evaluate these images? It is important to point out that in order to solve problems like evaluation coral reefs of Kailua bay, scientists need to interpret the data collected and analyze it based on scientific process. The students will now learn how to analyze remote sensing data.

Teacher reference

  

Student activity:

  • Students view the image.


Sample student responses:

  • Eastern part of Oahu island
  • Kailua bay
  • AVIRIS was chosen as the remote sensing instrument. ER-2 was chosen as the aircraft for the Kailua Bay coral reef mission.
  • We can distinguish sand and fossil reefs from the living coral reef.

 

 

  • Which activities (if any) should be restricted around the coral reefs of Kailua Bay to insure their lasting protection?
  • We have to know the health of the coral reefs in Kailua Bay in order to make a recommendation to Congress.


  • It is difficult to evaluate the state of the coral reefs in Kailua Bay without any criteria that distinguish healthy vs. non-healthy coral reefs.  Also, a single image without a base for comparison makes it difficult to make statements about the health of the corals (we need at least 2 images to compare).
  • We can evaluate the health of the coral reefs with ground truth photographs, remote sensing images, and further analyses of these data.