Wednesday, December 17, 2003
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Wednesday, December 17, 2003 |
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Kedron Elem. joins NASA project Tell Kedron Elementary School Principal Karen Bullock that all the excitement at Kedron these days is over the upcoming Christmas holidays and she will disagree. She will tell you that exciting things will continue to happen throughout the school year for faculty and students alike. Take, for example, the Urban Heat Island study the school is involved with. Always on the lookout for ways to partner with private industry, government agencies, and other educational entities, Ms. Bullock and Kedron Elementary recently embarked on a project that has global implications. Kedron Elementary School began a partnership with NASA and Clark Atlanta University to study the effects of a large metropolitan area such as Atlanta on the environment in the surrounding suburbs. “Urban areas modify rainfall patterns through the creation of an urban heat island,” said Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “We are working with Clark Atlanta University to strategically place rainfall gauges in such a way that there will be a 60-mile by 100-mile area centered around Atlanta to accurately define this modification.” Carlos Garza, Director for the NASA-Clark Atlanta Urban Raingauge Network, is no stranger to this type of weather research. He headed the National Weather Service offices in Georgia for 18 years before going into a more formal research environment at Clark Atlanta University. “I have always enjoyed working with schools and talking about weather,” Garza said. “Now I have an opportunity to continue to provide real-time research projects to students from the K-level all the way to the college level.” Bullock sees several possibilities for her students. “First of all, it is quite an honor to be involved with agencies that work on environmental issues,” she said. “But the most important thing that will come out of this is that Kedron students will be able to see that they will be helping scientists learn more about the environment in which we all live in.” Kedron Elementary will be one of nearly 35 schools that will provide data to NASA through Clark Atlanta University on this research project. In addition, the data will be available to school students to look at and perform analysis of rain over their school while comparing this to other metro areas.
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