NOSB 2000 Research Project: Salmon management plan

For the NOSB 2000 Research Project and Oral Presentation, high school teams developed a long-term salmon management plan based on historical salmon production and management programs in their local fisheries. Each team wrote a research paper and gave an oral presentation during the Alaska NOSB competition in Seward.

2000 student research papers

Research project description

Document preparation guidelines

Judging criteria

Why a research project?

2000 Winners

First place: White Mountain School team

Second place: Juneau-Douglas High School, "Tsunami" team

Third place: Chugiak High School

Fourth Place: Seward "Resurrection" team

The Research Project:

This project will count as 50 percent of the 2000 Alaska Region NOSB competition. The document will be worth 25 percent and the oral presentation of the project will count as 25 percent toward the 50-percent total.

The Question:
Throughout Alaska, salmon support important subsistence, sport, and commercial fisheries. Both nature and human activities impact salmon in many ways. Examples include weather, hatcheries, oil spills, forestry practices, fishing, and habitat destruction. Discuss the future of salmon populations and fisheries in Alaska. Prepare a long-term management plan for the salmon resources closest to you, considering both scientific and socioeconomic factors.

The Task:
Welcome to the real world of science, where you have to deal with questions having no definitive answers. This quandary will call for creative thinking on the part of each team and its members. Your task will be to collect as much of the known information and data as you can and present it in a cohesive report. The resources list that you generate can include but is not exclusive to contacts with federal and state agencies, fishing industry organizations, native corporations and the university research community. Track down local sources. You have to find as many details as you can from many different information avenues. From all the varied bits of knowledge and points of view that you explore, you will have to determine which story or stories to present in your document.

Your document should explore the potential causes of population changes and propose means to improve our understanding of the problem. Each team is expected to cover all the pertinent scientific and socioeconomic aspects of the topic and prioritize them. Include information on the magnitude of the problem and how Alaskan industries and communities are impacted. Recommendations should be made on how to seek answers to parts of the question and which aspects are higher priorities than others. All recommendations made should follow logically from the material documented in the manuscript.

Document preparation guidelines

Judging criteria

2000 research papers | Info for coaches and teams

Research paper archives | NOSB home page

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