This month's lesson, How Clean is that Water?, and associated activity provide the opportunity for students to explore ways in which agriculture can impact the environment. Through this exploration, students will learn the importance of agricultural and environmental engineers working together. Specifically, the lesson and activity provide the opportunity for students to explore the effects of fertilizer on the water supply.

The lesson plan helps students understand the factors that affect water quality and the conditions that allow for different animals and plants to survive. Students will look at the effects of water quality on various water-related activities and describe water as an environmental, economic and social resource. The students will also learn how engineers use water quality information to make decisions about stream modifications. In the associated activity, Pea Soup Ponds, students will learn how water can be polluted by algal blooms created by fertilizer. They will grow algae with different concentrations of fertilizer or nutrients and analyze their results as environmental engineers working to protect a local water resource.

Another resource on agricultural engineering available through the Engineering Pathway catalog is a list of curriculum guides for K-12 educators interested in teaching their students about sustainable agriculture provided by Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education.

These curricular resources are brought to you by the new Engineering Pathway, a part of the National Science Digital Library. The portal provides high-quality teaching and learning resources in applied science and math, engineering, computer science/information technology and engineering technology - for use by K-12 and university educators. The Engineering Pathway brings together quality engineering education materials from all over the internet allowing teachers to search all of these documents in a single location. The lesson and activity are from the TeachEngineering Digital Library for K-12 engineering curricula.