Water Rocks! launches new edition of Rock Your Watershed game
Practice your conservation skills by playing this innovative game based on common scenarios.
Water Rocks!, the Iowa State University Extension and Outreach youth water education program, has released the third edition of Rock Your Watershed!, its highly-acclaimed online water quality and land management game for early teens and beyond.
The new edition of this award-winning game incorporates immersive 3-D graphics and an introduction video to help players learn the basics. The game now includes more options for land use, fertilizer application and climate conditions, and with updated in-game modification features, it provides for exploration of “what-if” scenarios for the players.
“Rock Your Watershed! has had over 275,000 plays over the years, and with a fully revamped user experience and design, we’re excited to see expanded use of the game in classroom settings and beyond,” said Ann Staudt, Water Rocks! director. “With enhanced climate scenarios that incorporate both rainfall amount and intensity, this new version of the game realistically reflects the interplay of choice and chance when it comes to land management, water quality and resilience across Iowa’s agricultural and urban landscapes.”
Chaoqun Lu, associate professor and primary investigator for the Macrosystems Ecology Lab at Iowa State, worked with Water Rocks! to integrate detailed water quality and nutrient loss models in the game.
“Ignacio Calderon, a graduate student working in my lab, conducted extensive analysis of weather patterns including rainfall amounts and intensity as well as extreme weather events to prepare the six unique climate options for the game,” said Lu. “The game randomly assigns a weather scenario when the user’s work is scored. This random selection represents the real-world uncertainty that faces farmers. Weather and climate conditions are ever-present wild cards that can change everything.”
The work to provide the climate models incorporated in Rock Your Watershed! was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation Award 1945036: Understanding the dynamics and predictability of land-to-aquatic nitrogen loading under climate extremes by combining deep learning with process-based modeling.
Rock Your Watershed! is available to play at the Water Rocks! website and is free to play by all. Water Rocks! also integrates the game in its school classroom visits and organizes annual statewide competitions in which classrooms vie for special prizes and accolades for topping the leaderboard in a one-day faceoff.
To learn more about Water Rocks!, visit www.waterrocks.org
PHOTO: A child playing the Water Rocks! conservation game. (Iowa State University Extension and Outreach)
