Activity 8: Mapping Our Community

 

 
Salmon sketch by Lewis and Clark. Photo from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Overview
Background Information
Objectives
Time
Materials
Advance Preparation
Setting the Stage
Conducting the Activity
Wrap-Up
Enrichment

Overview
In this activity, participants create a map of their community to depict connections between the people and the salmon and/or steelhead that live or once lived there. Participants incorporate into the map things they learned from earlier activities, including:

Note: The procedure describes making a community map on poster board, but you may choose to have your group make a Web-based map. In that case, participants may insert miniature pictures of key features so that when someone clicks on a picture, a written summary of information appears (see Dynamic Digital Mapping under Resources: Aerial Photos and Mapping ).

Background Information
Wendell Berry, American poet and conservationist, says if you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are. Making a map of the community helps to deepen participants’ sense of place and to further ground their study of salmon and steelhead in connection with their community and their watershed. The maps they create will help them to think about their community from the perspective of salmon and steelhead.

For more information about fostering a sense of place, see the Research on Place and Space web site for a list of resources and links.

Objectives
Participants will: (1) use and understand existing maps of the community, and (2) create a map that shows the connections between people, and salmon and steelhead within the community.

Time
Setting the Stage: One group session
Activity: One or more group sessions

Materials

Advance Preparation

  1. Obtain a detailed street map of your community from a local store, or through your auto club, local tourist office, or library.
  2. Obtain or create a “skeleton” map of your community that simply shows its boundaries and a few major streets. You may get such a map at mapquest.com or similar online mapping site, or from your town’s tourist website, or similar source.
  3. If possible, find one or two examples of resource maps of your community - such as a map of bicycle routes, parks, wildlife, tourist sites, or restaurants.
  4. Make an overhead transparency of the skeleton map.
  5. Gather other materials.

Setting the Stage

  1. Begin by asking the group what kinds of information a city map or town map shows.
  2. Point out that many maps focus on one kind of information, such as just parks or schools. If you have them, show some examples of resource maps of your community (see Advance Preparation ).
  3. Explain to participants that they will be creating a map of your community that shows the community’s connection to salmon and steelhead. Tell participants that they will incorporate into their maps information they have gained from earlier activities.

Conducting the Activity

  1. Ask, “What might we include in our map to show connections between our community, and salmon and steelhead?” List their ideas on the board. Participants might suggest things like:

    • The creek
    • The watershed boundary
    • Actions that affect the water (like putting pollutants on the ground)
    • Groups that help salmon and steelhead
  2. If participants need help thinking of ideas, have them recall what they learned from the previous activities.
  3. Discuss what symbols or icons participants could use on their maps to represent the different elements, and discuss the importance of a map key or legend.
  4. Point out that in creating the maps, participants may place symbols and other elements within the map itself, but may also add photographs, graphs, tables, lists, or other supporting details and draw arrows to the map.
  5. For each team’s map, tape poster board onto a wall and project the map transparency (see Advance Preparation ) onto it. Help the team trace the map onto the poster board and label key streets and other features shown on the skeleton map.
  6. Give teams time to flesh out the details of their community maps, inserting the information identified in step 1. Teams should label their map and include at least 10 ways that the community is connected to salmon and steelhead.

Wrap-Up

  1. Have teams share their maps with the group.
  2. Display the maps in the community or school library. Seek other possible public venues (city hall, the local water or resource agency, and so on).
  3. Have participants look at the KWLR chart. Have them think about the guiding question: How do people affect salmon and steelhead, and how do salmon and steelhead affect people? Ask whether there is anything they could add to or adjust on the chart in light of the community mapping activity.

Enrichment
Build a 3-D model of your local watershed. See the 4-H curriculum From Ridges to Rivers: Watershed Explorations for more information.