Explore TTCD's complete K-12 STEM curriculum, educational docuseries video playlists, hands-on field inquiry worksheets, and Dena'ina cultural science frameworks.
Watch official educational docuseries, field science demonstrations, and community conservation workshops produced by the Tyonek Tribal Conservation District. Explore multi-part investigative series on invasive pike, watershed hydrology, soil microbiology, and salmon fisheries engineering.
Explores the introduction and biological background of invasive Northern Pike (Esox lucius) in Southcentral Alaska and the West Cook Inlet region. Learn why pike are native to northern and interior drainages, but apex apex-predator invaders in Cook Inlet streams where native salmon have not evolved defense mechanisms against their ambush hunting tactics.
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6:12 Explore 30 standards-aligned lessons, field inquiry worksheets, STEM lab protocols, and kinesthetic outdoor games developed by TTCD for Tebughna School and Alaskan educators. Launch interactive virtual experiments, comprehension quizzes, and vocabulary decks directly in your browser.
Ecosystems & Wildlife Outdoor Field Inquiry 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Teaches students how to observe natural phenomena systematically using all five senses without disrupting wildlife. Includes structured field journaling sheets, sketch boxes, qualitative description prompts, and measurement logs tailored for sub-arctic forest and beach ecosystems.
Ecosystems & Wildlife STEM Lab 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Explores how Alaskan insects (like the Upis beetle) and northern evergreens withstand deep sub-zero conditions without their cellular membranes bursting. Demonstrates freeze tolerance versus freeze avoidance through solute colligative properties.
Ecosystems & Wildlife STEM Lab 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Hands-on lesson investigating continuous, discontinuous, and sporadic permafrost in Alaska. Students construct layered soil cores, freeze them, and model what happens to roads, buildings, and lake beds when permafrost thaws into thermokarst lakes.
Ecosystems & Wildlife STEM Lab 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Investigates how wildlife in Western Cook Inlet manage their caloric budgets through sub-zero winters. Compares the three primary biological survival strategies: migrating south, growing thick insulative fur and blubber, or entering deep torpor and hibernation.
Ecosystems & Wildlife Outdoor Field Inquiry 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Field guide and activity exploring the fungal kingdom in Southcentral Alaska boreal forests. Focuses on the role of mycelium as decomposers and mycorrhizal partners to paper birch and white spruce trees, with step-by-step spore printing instructions.
Ecosystems & Wildlife Field Game 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz An active simulation game teaching the four essential components of wildlife habitat: food, water, cover, and space. Students play moose seeking willow browse and winter shelter while navigating wolves, deep snow, and hunting pressure.
Ecosystems & Wildlife Field Game 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Interactive sensory game modeling how critically endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales use clicks and melon echolocation to navigate muddy, silt-laden waters and catch salmon without sight.
Ecosystems & Wildlife Outdoor Field Inquiry 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Field science protocol for digging snow pits, analyzing snow crystal stratigraphy, measuring snow water equivalent (SWE), and predicting spring stream runoff for salmon rivers.
Fisheries & Water Field Game 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz A fast-paced active game illustrating the incredible anadromous life cycle of Alaska salmon from egg (alevin), to fry, smolt, ocean adult, and returning spawner navigating predators and culverts.
Fisheries & Water STEM Lab 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Engineering and hydrology worksheet examining how poorly designed corrugated metal road culverts block juvenile and adult salmon. Explores perched outfalls, velocity chutes, and bottomless arch culvert restoration designs.
Invasive Species Classroom Activity 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Structured companion curriculum worksheet paired with the TTCD Invasive Northern Pike Docuseries. Guides students through video analysis, data interpretation, and regional mapping.
Invasive Species Field Game 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Kinesthetic learning game demonstrating ecological disruption in a shallow lake ecosystem. Shows how a single invasive apex predator drastically alters biodiversity and juvenile salmon survivorship.
Invasive Species Classroom Activity 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Laboratory and field identification guide detailing Elodea’s vegetative fragmentation reproduction, whorled leaf counts, and difference from native look-alikes like American waterweed and mare’s tail.
Ecosystems & Wildlife Community Science 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Standardized observation guidelines enabling K-12 students and Tebughna community members to record high-value environmental data: ice phenology, spring bird arrivals, stream water temperatures, and berries.
Soil & Agriculture STEM Lab 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Introduction to soil as a living skin of the earth composed of minerals, air, water, and organic matter. Students excavate small soil pits in the Tyonek garden to examine O, A, B, and C master horizons.
Soil & Agriculture Field Game 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Kinesthetic lesson demonstrating relative particle sizes. Sand particles act like beach balls, silt like frisbees, and clay like microscopic coins, showing why water drains fast through sand and clings tightly to clay.
Soil & Agriculture Outdoor Field Inquiry 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Exploration of macro-invertebrates and micro-organisms living in healthy garden compost and forest litter. Students build Berlese funnels to extract and classify springtails, mites, nematodes, and earthworms.
Soil & Agriculture STEM Lab 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Practical guide to constructing and managing aerated compost piles in cold-climate Alaska. Covers balancing carbon-rich brown materials with nitrogen-rich greens, integrating clean fish scraps, and monitoring core temperatures.
Soil & Agriculture STEM Lab 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Anatomy and germination lab dissecting soaked lima beans. Students identify the seed coat (testa), stored food supply (cotyledon), and dormant embryo, then test environmental triggers required for germination.
Soil & Agriculture STEM Lab 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Introduces advanced controlled-environment agriculture used in remote northern climates. Students build a desktop Deep Water Culture (DWC) or Kratky hydroponic unit to grow lettuce and fresh greens year-round.
Soil & Agriculture Classroom Activity 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Classification game examining evolutionary adaptations of seeds: wind flyers (dandelion, fireweed), animal hitchhikers (burdock, cleavers), water floaters, and animal-eaten berry seeds.
Soil & Agriculture STEM Lab 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Practical gardening guide covering seed sowing depth, tray moisture management, hardening off transplants, and soil temperature thresholds for Tyonek community garden crops.
Soil & Agriculture Outdoor Field Inquiry 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Explores the vital role of native sub-arctic bumblebees (*Bombus*), syrphid hoverflies, and solitary bees in pollinating wild salmonberries, blueberries, highbush cranberries, and cultivated vegetable crops.
Food Systems & Ethnobotany Outdoor Field Inquiry 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Comprehensive overview of traditional plant use by the Tebughna people of Cook Inlet. Details traditional harvesting ethics, seasonal calendars, medicinal preparations (wormwood, Labrador tea), and fiber/craft uses (spruce root, birch bark).
Food Systems & Ethnobotany Outdoor Field Inquiry 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Field identification sheet covering Western Cook Inlet’s edible wild berries: salmonberries (cloudberries), bog blueberries, crowberries, lowbush cranberries (lingonberries), and highbush cranberries, along with toxic look-alikes like baneberry.
Food Systems & Ethnobotany STEM Lab 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Kitchen chemistry curriculum exploring the molecular science of food preservation. Explores how natural fruit pectin, sugar concentrations, boiling temperature (220°F gelling point), and acidity create a stable fruit gel.
Food Systems & Ethnobotany Classroom Activity 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Compares the fragile global food supply chain that barges groceries into Anchorage and flies them to remote villages against Tyonek’s resilient dual-pillar local system: wild subsistence harvesting and community agriculture.
Food Systems & Ethnobotany Classroom Activity 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Visual sequencing activity tracing vegetables from seed selection in early spring, planting in high tunnels, weeding and watering, harvesting, washing, packing, and cooking nutritious meals at the Tebughna School.
Food Systems & Ethnobotany Community Science 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz Cartographic and community inquiry project where youth interview elders and map traditional salmon fish camps, berry ridges, moose browse corridors, community potato patches, and seasonal distribution networks.
Dena’ina Culture & TEK Classroom Activity 🖥️ Walkthrough Slides & Quiz The master cultural framework presentation guiding educators on embedding Dena’ina language, Tebughna values, seasonal cycles, and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) directly into Western STEM lessons.
Science in Tyonek does not exist in isolation from culture. For centuries, the Tebughna ("People of the Beach") have practiced deep ecological stewardship across the rivers, muskegs, and marine waters of Western Cook Inlet.
Lessons correspond directly with the ecological harvest calendar: King salmon arrival in May/June, berry gathering in late July/August, moose and silver salmon harvest in September, and winter subsistence trapping.
Every science unit introduces local Dena’ina terminology for organisms and geological landmarks, reinforcing dialect preservation and native language acquisition for K-12 youth.
Students learn the foundational Native value of reciprocity: taking only what is needed, sharing harvests with village elders first, and maintaining clean water for future generations of fish and people.
"Our ancestors understood the watershed long before Western science coined the term. Integrating Dena’ina knowledge empowers our youth to be both modern scientists and faithful custodians of our homeland."
Study the traditional uses, harvesting practices, and ecological relationships of plants native to Tyonek and the West Cook Inlet watershed.
Exploring traditional Alaskan plants gathered across the Tyonek District, combining indigenous ecological knowledge with natural resource conservation.
Dena'ina: "Ch'ixht'i" (Matteuccia struthiopteris)
Harvested in early spring before fronds unfurl. High in iron, potassium, and vitamins A & C. Prepared by boiling and sautéing.
Dena'ina: "Lida K'el'i" (Rhododendron groenlandicum)
Aromatic evergreen leaves steeped as a traditional soothing herbal tea for respiratory health and cold remedies.
Dena'ina: "Q'adaxht'i" (Rubus spectabilis)
Juicy golden and ruby berries gathered in mid-summer. Eaten fresh, preserved into jams, or mixed with wild salmon dishes.
Dena'ina: "Dach'ekh" (Rubus strigosus)
Harvested along stream banks and high tunnel perimeters for high-vitamin summer snacks and traditional desserts.
Dena'ina history archives, traditional harvest recipes, subsistence surveys, and community stories.
View Collection →Continuous stream temperature loggers, Northern Pike suppression telemetry, and water quality datasets.
View Collection →Alaska TCD Network subgrant RFPs, NRCS partnership agreements, and district formation handbooks.
View Collection →