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 will use NASA Satellite data of aerosol optical depth and sulfur dioxide as a tool to find evidence of volcanic activity at Kilauea, HI.
Students discuss their current understanding of what Earth systems are and how they work and consider how to identify the boundaries of a region for Earth system study.
Students construct explanations about Earth’s energy budget by connecting a model with observations from side-by-side animations of the monthly mapped data showing incoming and outgoing shortwave radiation from Earth’s surface.
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.