Students develop and test a hypothesis about how albedo affects temperature.
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Conduct this EO Kids mini-lesson with your students to explore the phenomenon of Urban Heat Island Effect.
Students collect and analyze temperature data to explore what governs how much energy is reflected.
Students analyze map visualizations representing the amount of Sun’s energy received on the Earth as indicated by the amount that is reflected back to space, known as “albedo”.
An urban heat island is a phenomenon that is best described when a city experiences much warmer temperatures than in nearby rural areas. The sun’s heat and light reach the city and the country in the same way. The difference in temperature between urban and less-developed rural areas has to do with how well the surfaces in each environment absorb and hold heat.
To help students articulate and integrate their existing knowledge about the air, water, soil, and living things by viewing them as interacting parts of a system
This lesson walks students through the use of Landsat false-color imagery and identification of different land cover features using these as models.
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.
Students learn how to estimate the "energy efficiency" of photosynthesis, or the amount of energy that plants absorb for any given location on Earth. This is the ratio of the amount of energy stored to the amount of light energy absorbed and is used to evaluate and model photosynthesis efficiency.
Students evaluate graphs and images of sea ice and relate them to changes in albedo. Students make a claim about the interaction of albedo and sea ice extent.