This USGS activity leads students to an understanding of what remote sensing means and how researchers use it to study changes to the Earth’s surface, such as deforestation. 

In this activity, you will use an inexpensive spectrophotometer* to test how light at different visible wavelengths (blue, green, red) is transmitted, or absorbed, through four different colored water samples.

Students will examine how radiation, conduction, and convection work together as a part of Earth’s Energy Budget to heat the atmosphere.

In this activity, students will compare the methods scientists use to study the Sun, including drawings made during a total solar eclipse in the 1860’s, modern coronagraphs, and advanced imagery gathered by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

In this activity, learners predict the likelihood of aurora on Earth by examining the Kp-index and using NOAA’s 30-minute aurora forecast.

Students consider the impact of changing conditions on the remote island of Little Diomede, Alaska after they investigate the relationship between seasonal trends in sea ice extent with shortwave and longwave radiation flux described in Earth’s energy budget.

In this activity, students explore the Urban Heat Island Effect phenomenon by collecting temperatures of different materials with respect to their locations.  This activity was modified from The NASA PUMAS Collection's "What makes

Use the Earth System Data Explorer to analyze data and make a claim about which 2018 eruption was larger, Kilauea, HI or Ambae Island, Vanuatu.

Students model Earth's tectonic plate movement and explore the relationship between these movements and different types of volcanoes.

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.