Rock contains far more carbon than the other four reservoirs combined. Note: Before you begin, notice the relative abundance of carbon in each of the five reservoirs. These investigations will help you model how carbon flows from one reservoir to another. Place the appropriate carbon reservoir image with the bag of rice that represents that reservoir. How many of those rice-filled boxes would you need to represent the amount of carbon in the Rock reservoir? How much space in the room would all those boxes take up? (A meter stick might be helpful to make these calculations.) To help imagine the amount of rice needed to represent the carbon in the Rock reservoir, determine how many grains will fit inside the 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm box. If something is too large to be represented by a physical model, it can help to find a way to visualize it. You may want to divide participants into four groups-one for each carbon reservoir-to do this step most efficiently. (Because rock contains a large amount of carbon, it cannot be physically represented by this model, so no bag will be needed for it.) Then, using the scale, measure the amount of rice that corresponds to the amount of carbon in each reservoir and place it into the correct bags. Use a marker to label four of the gallon-sized bags with the name of each of the four major reservoirs except Rock. Using the chart below (click to enlarge), calculate how many grams of rice represents the amount of carbon in each of the four reservoirs (listed in bold) except Rock. If you have a large group, you will be able to use all those "extra" 100s of grains of rice for the next step. (In our sample, 500 grains of rice had a mass of 15 grams.) To create an accurate model of the relative abundance of carbon present in each of the five major carbon reservoirs, let each grain of rice represent 1 gigaton of carbon (GtC). The five major carbon reservoirs are: Rock, Atmosphere, Oceans, Terrestrial Biosphere, and Fossil Fuels.Įach participant should count 100 grains of rice, and combine 5 of these to make 500 grains total. They are interchangeable, and we will use GtC in this Snack.īefore you begin, ask participants if they can think of any of the earth’s carbon reservoirs. One gigaton is equal to one billion metric tons of carbon (or one petagram, which is 10 15 grams). Note: A gigaton of carbon (GtC) and a petagram of carbon (PgC) are the fundamental units of measurement of carbon at planetary cycling scales.
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