Seamonster Education: A Sensor Network Project in Southeast Alaska

The NASA Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science (ROSES) program is supporting a wireless sensor network project as part of its Advanced Information Systems Technology "Smart Sensor Web" initiative. The project, entitled Seamonster (for SouthEast Alaska MONitoring Network for Science, Telecomm, and Education Research) is led by the University of Alaska Southeast (Juneau) in collaboration with Microsoft- Vexcel in Boulder Colorado. This paper describes the Education Research component of Seamonster with emphasis on live scientist connection to educators, field experience, and inquiry-based student learning opportunity. Part of the Seamonster science will focus on a succession of valleys near Juneau in various stages of deglaciation, in effect providing a synopsis of a millennium-timescale process in a single moment. The Seamonster sensor configuration is designed to initially focus on a single watershed--Lemon Creek--and to subsequently expand to this larger region of interest. The aim is to provide data that narrates the story of watershed processes in real time, for example connecting precipitation to outflow volume and turbidity throughout the course of the year. As the project grows in scope the educational component will expand to keep pace. Having educators and by extension their students connected to data-driven stories as they unfold is a major objective of the project and will represent a milestone in efforts to include more people in front-end science as it happens.