For the inhabitants of Greenland, Iceland or Svalbard glaciers are available on walking distance, for the residents of the Alpine or sub-alpine villages to reach the glacier is a matter of the longer tour. For residents of other areas, glaciers are distant objects, the same they may become even more exotic and interesting. The problem of ablation, reducing the area of ice sheets and glaciers, associated with the global climate warming, is a topic constantly present in the media. Therefore significantly increases the interest in the subject.
The educational package “GLACIERS” aims to increase knowledge of the glaciers, beyond standard school textbooks. The package will consist of a general part – the introduction of substantive information on glaciers and part with work sheets – to be filled in by the students.
The first part includes:
1. General description of the glaciers, the geographical conditions of their occurrence, presentation of the basic types (mountain glaciers (valley glaciers), piedmont glaciers, ice dome, outlet glaciers, and ice sheets), erosion, transport and accumulation and basic glacial morphology forms.
2. Presentations of selected issues such as:
– Mass balance of glaciers,
– Internal drainage system and glacial karst,
– Glacier motion, calving, surge,
– Glacial erosion and accumulation forms, fluvio-glacial forms.
3. Documentary films, showing the details of the issues discussed
Second part of the package will include tasks related to the presentations to be performed by the students. Each exercise will allow students to become familiar with the methods of monitoring of various glacial processes and the way of their use. For filling in the work sheets students will be using sets of measuring data, attached to tasks or obtainable in public free databases e.g. www.eklima.met.no. An additional effect of the work with the package will be to familiarize students with the rules of use of the available online scientific databases.
