The Great Smoky Mountains have a unique climate and weather pattern. Students will review a Landsat image and read about the history of the area and why Native Americans called the area “Shaconage.” Then they will answer the questions about what caused the unusual “blue smoke.”
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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.
Using hourly graphs of PM 2.5 data and HYSPLIT model trajectories, students will collect evidence for the effects of fireworks on air quality.
Students are divided into three different groups and are assigned a category of drivers of change in regional trends of freshwater storage (Climate Change, Human Activity, and Natural Variability).
In this interactive, students will explore safe methods for viewing the Sun at home or in the classroom, including using solar eclipse glasses and a pinhole projector. The interactive includes a video that explains how the projector works and how to build one.
Students identify and classify kinds of land cover (such as vegetation, urban areas, water, and bare soil) in Landsat satellite images of Phoenix, Arizona taken in 1984 and 2018.
This story map allows students to explore the urban heat island effect using land surface temperature and vegetation data in a 5 E-learning cycle. Students investigate 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 identify and describe the relationship between land cover classification and surface temperature as they relate to the urban heat island effect. Students will also describe patterns between population density and the locations of urban heat islands.
Students will analyze how surface (skin) temperatures vary across a community and determine what factors contribute to this variation. Students will describe how human activity can affect the local environment.
This Lesson Plan provides some generic maps, graphs, and data tables for use with the Data Literacy Cube. Because this is a differentiated resource, it is appropriate for multiple grade bands.