In this activity, students explore three indicators of drought are: soil moisture, lack of precipitation, and decreased streamflows. Students investigate each of these parameters develop a sense for the effects of drought on land.
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Students review Earth System phenomena that are affected by soil moisture. They analyze and evaluate maps of seasonal global surface air temperature and soil moisture data from NASA satellites. Building from their observations, students will select a location in the U.S.
Students will analyze nitrogen dioxide concentration in the atmosphere at different spatial and temporal scales, and describe the stability of nitrogen dioxide as it relates to changes in human behavior.
Students review an animation of monthly average wind speed at 10 meters above the ocean surface for our global ocean to analyze the relationship between winds and ocean surface currents.
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.
The activities in this guide will help students understand variations in environmental parameters by examining connections among different phenomena measured on local, regional and global scales.
Air, Water, Land, & Life: A Global Perspective
Information from satellites if often used to display information about objects. This information can include how things appear, as well as their contents. Explore how pixel data sequences can be used to create an image and interpret it.
Scientific data are often represented by assigning ranges of numbers to specific colors. The colors are then used to make false color images which allow us to see patterns more easily. Students will make a false-color image using a set of numbers.