An Inquiry-based Study of a Pipeline

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Originally appears in the Spring 2021 issue.

By Stacy Cameron

The construction of a natural gas pipeline (Nexus) has occurred through my school community in Northeast Ohio. The pathway of the pipeline may impact my students’ homes, natural reservoirs, and water systems. The pipeline will transport 1.5 billion cubic feet per day of shale gas to markets throughout northeast Ohio, Michigan, and parts of Canada[1]. The presence of natural gas pipelines raises ecological concerns for residents of communities located along the projected pathway of construction. Specifically, in Ohio, the construction areas are in numerous exponentially growing cities and suburban communities[2]. Public concerns center around water quality and its connection to hydraulic fracturing[3]. Given this pipeline’s construction, I wanted a central component of my high school Ecology class to be associated with learning about its environmental threats through scientific inquiry.

With the COVID-19 pandemic having impacted hands-on student engagement for many schools last spring, there was great need for when schools returned in the fall. Thus, I developed a student-driven inquiry-based unit to tie our exploration of water quality testing and anthropogenic effects into an aquatic ecology unit. Students questioned whether the pipeline construction impacted the pH and dissolved oxygen concentration of different water sources in our community.