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Climate Change’s Impact on Sea Level Rise in a Coastal Marsh Over 20 Years

Author(s): Emma Powell, Holly Robison

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Summary:
In this lesson, students will learn about increasing sea level rise and the direct impacts coastal marshes are facing as a result. Students will learn the importance of coastal marshes, tidal fluctuations, and climate change. A focal paper will be…

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In this lesson, students will learn about increasing sea level rise and the direct impacts coastal marshes are facing as a result. Students will learn the importance of coastal marshes, tidal fluctuations, and climate change. A focal paper will be evaluated to see the increase in tidal ranges in Piermont Marsh, New York, spanning 20 years. Students should have RStudio or R installed on their computers as well as have basic R programming knowledge, including how to load in datasets and packages. In R, the student will learn how to recreate a boxplot from the focal paper. They will also create a scatterplot to further show the relationship between water elevation and distance from the creek. They will also perform further analysis through an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) test to determine if there is an interaction between water elevation and distance from the creek. At the end of this lesson, students will understand the importance of coastal marsh and the impact climate change is having on tides. Students will also be able to interpret differences in boxplots and ANCOVA summaries.

Description

Student will work on data visualization skills by recreating a boxplot from the focal paper, and by creating a scatterplot. They will also be able to gain further analysis and interpretation skills through performing an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) test to determine if there is an interaction between different variables. 

This lesson includes the focal paper, raw data, and R code from the focal paper. In the lesson, there will be background information on coastal marshes, tides, and climate change that is associated with what is discussed in the paper. The lesson will include important aspects from the paper that will be used for analyses such as methods and results. There will also be a thorough lesson on ANCOVA where students will be taught how to evaluate plots and summaries. A video presentation and instructor version of the lesson are included to provide additional information and to help lead the lesson.

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