More than 100 students at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville will try their hands today at saving the Chesapeake Bay. They'll sit down at computers, pretend they're farmers, developers, watermen and policy makers and see if they can figure out how to restore this national treasure without putting themselves out of business in the process. It's all in good fun, but with a serious educational purpose.
It's a showcase for the university's Bay Game, an interactive role-playing computer simulation that's programmed to track the health of the Chesapeake while responding to the actions of the people who live on the water and make a living within its 64,000-square mile watershed.
"I'm trying to educate the students here," said David Smith, a professor of environmental science who played a major role in the game's development. "I want them to be environmentally literate people." The bay's a complex place, he said, where natural and social forces interact. Through playing the game, Smith said, "I want them to learn a more sophisticated approach and be attuned to the complexity."
The game is the product of more than a year's collaboration among faculty from 11 departments in eight different schools. It divides the bay up into seven different watersheds, generally tracking major river tributaries. Programmers have keyed in 51,000 mathematical equations to model the impacts of nutrients fouling the bay's water, government incentives to curb the pollution and fishing pressure and regulations, among other things.