Abstract:

Educators around the world are continually looking for methods and strategies that foster learning and thus the acquisition of knowledge and skills that make students competent. These include: problem-based learning, collaborative learning and research learning.

A project of study of coastal upwellings, can satisfy these tendencies and achieve an integrative learning of several subjects of Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics, besides being interesting for the students for being a little known phenomenon that only occurs in certain places , Particularly on the eastern coasts of the oceans that have certain characteristics.

In fact, the phenomenon can occur anywhere in the ocean, but its most prominent features occur along the eastern edges of the oceans, as in the NW and SW of Africa, California, Peru and Chile, where the sea water has relatively low temperatures and have a high production of plankton.

Sediments under high upwelling areas are typically rich in organic matter, sediments provide some guidelines for the intensity of upwelling as planktonic species tend to indicate cold waters.

Another factor of interest is that there are several types of upwellings: one oceanic, one coastal, one equatorial. Of these the coastal or coastal upwelling is very important since it determines remarkable climatic and biological contrasts and creates the conditions for a great biological productivity.

The origin of the upwellings is related to the force exerted by the wind on the surface of the sea and with the presence of the coast. These phenomena depend on the combination of many factors among which are: the direction of the wind; The shape and orientation of the coast, the features of the submerged bottom.

Upwellings brings several consequences, including: lowering the temperature of the water near the coast, the air adjacent to the sea surface cools and increases its relative humidity which generally results in the formation of coastal fog, Sea breeze, can decrease the dissolved oxygen content in sea water and increase the amount of nutrients in the area.

All these effects, which are of great interest to science, makes its study a project requires research and problem solving, leading students to perceive the need for knowledge of different subjects and even educational levels and with it collaboration between students, between teachers and between students and teachers, resulting in a didactic resource of very broad application.

The present work consists of a didactic proposal for the study of the phenomenon of coastal upwellings at a pre-university level, with the participation of professors and students of Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics, which has the characteristics mentioned above.

Keywords:

Coastal Upmellings Didactic proposal, Didactic strategy.