School of Dreams (126)

The School of Dreams team (#126) is from Las Lunas. This year they've submitted a project titled Constraint of Forest Fires.

Proposal
http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/get_proposal1112.php?team_id=126

Constraint of Forest Fires

Team: 126

School: School of Dreams Academy

Area of Science: Environmental

Our project is based off of the resent wildfires around New Mexico. We choose this because the environment around us has been negatively impacted and we were interested in modeling a forest fire. This project will contain various inputs, like the type of trees and humidity, etc, so we can predict the amount of waste (ash, soot, charred wood) the fire produced. We plan on talking to local fire chiefs, wildlife experts, and various professionals. We are combining our project with another team to create a cause and effect scenario. They will be working with the aftermath of our fire and the environmental challenges. We hope we will be successful enough apply this to the real world.

Team Members:

Maria Troyer Emma Clary-Gelinas Mary Arleth

Sponsoring Teacher: Creighton Edington

Interim Report
http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/get_interim1112.php?team_id=126

Constraint of Forest Fires

Team: 126

School: School of Dreams Academy

Area of Science: Environmental

Prject Title: Constraint of Forest Fires

Problem Definition:
This past year there has been many fires around New Mexico and Arizona. These fires have caused various environmental hazards including water and air pollution. The purpose of our project is to determine the amount of waste a fire will produce. We will have several inputs so the user can factor in the different types of plants. We are working with another team that will take the our information and use it to determine how to deal with fire waste pertaining to water pollution.

Problem Solution:
The program we are creating will demonstrate a fire burning in the bosque. There will be various inputs of the environment such as the different plants found in this environment. The program will then figure the amount of waste produced by the fire.

Progress to Date:
Other than building the fire for the program, we have met with the local Fire Chief to discuss the characterists of wild fires. We are also planning on meeting with a New Mexico State Forestry specialist to discuss the output our model is going to produce. He will also help us gather the information we need so our program can determine the correct outputs

Expected Results:
Our hope is that our project will determine the waste produced by wild fires in the bosque. If our model is programmed correctly each fire will be different depending on the various changes of the inputs.

Team Members:

Maria Troyer Emma Clary-Gelinas Mary Arleth

Sponsoring Teacher: Creighton Edington

Interim Comments
Hello,

This topic sounds very interesting. I was a high schooler in Los Alamos when a huge fire hit it in 2000. I was amazed at how all the streams ran black for months after the fire. We definitely need projects like yours in order to understand just what this type of pollution is doing to our land.

I have a few questions that might help guide your search.

What type Are you planning on targeting specific chemical pollutants? From my very limited understanding of water chemistry, I believe different pollutants can have very different behavior in our watershed. Some will quickly sink into the muds in stream beds while others are carried for hundreds of miles down stream.

Modeling

Are you going to be modeling the actual propagation of fires or are you going to be modeling the propagation of the pollutants? How are you going to find the plant type and density data? Do you know how those plants affect pollution when they are burned? Is there currently any pollution data that you can use to validate your model?

Literature Review

Do you have any literature that you are planning on looking at? Do you need any help finding publications on the topic?

Reminder

Remember that you have face to face evaluations coming up. Your next milestone is a |face to face evaluation in February.

The judges will use these rubrics to evaluate your projects. Use them as checklists for what you need to communicate to the judges.


 * Expo Judges Rubric
 * Finalist Judges Rubric

I'm interested to see what sort of models and conclusions your group comes up with. Good luck!

John Donahue

=Team Comments=

Final Report
No final submitted yet.