Students will learn about and describe the different classifications of Air Quality Index and the importance of standards in air quality monitoring. Students will also use scientific evidence and reasoning to support a claim about long-term trends in air quality in the United States.
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Students will review the sources of the six criteria pollutants for which the EPA has established standards for and describe their impacts on human health and the environment.
Students will analyze how air pollution may be transported over time. Students will also differentiate between sources of air pollution and describe how air pollution interacts with the Earth System.
Worldview is a valuable resource in understanding information about the atmosphere. Learn how to access models in order to answer your own questions.
This lesson uses the National Park Service Story Map which displays national parks around the contiguous United States and their standard exceedance ozone concentrations from 2016-2021. Students will explore ozone levels and answer questions.
Several heat domes have occurred over the last few summers and around the world. This lesson provides one example from 2021 in Portland, Oregon, with temperature and ozone data.
Students will analyze images and data from a variety of NASA sensors and satellites depicting the wildfires of northern Canada to understand the state of the atmosphere at the time. Then they will answer a series of questions.
The Urban Heat Island Implementation Sequence provides a series of lessons and activities for students to learn about the processes that create differences in surface temperatures, as well as how human activities have led to the creation of urban heat islands.
Students will explore the Nitrogen Cycle by modeling the movement of a nitrogen atom as it passes through the cycle. Students will stop in the different reservoirs along the way, answering questions about the processes that brought them to the different reservoirs.
This lesson was based on an activity from UCAR Center for Science Education.
Students watch videos and/or review articles related to particulate matter and how this pollutant is monitored and measured, then provide their understanding individually or in groups.