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.

This StoryMap 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. 

This StoryMap allows students to explore the formation and impacts of ash and aerosols from volcanic eruptions around the world in a 5 E-learning cycle. They will investigate how ash and aerosols produced from volcanic eruptions are hazardous to the human ecosystem, and will analyze concentrations of aerosols from a volcanic eruption over time. 

This StoryMap lesson plan allows students to explore ocean circulation patterns as they relate to the world's ocean garbage patches using NASA ocean currents data. Students will investigate the forces that contribute to ocean circulation patterns, and how debris, especially plastics, travel from land to the garbage patches. 

Students interpret a double bar/column chart comparing the number of tropical cyclones in different locations.

Students will analyze the monthly seasonal chlorophyll concentration images in our global oceans for the four different months of 2024, and then answer the following questions.

Helping students build their understanding of Earth's spheres and how they are connected is difficult.  Review the graphics to help identify the parts of the Earth System and the processes that connect them at the local, regional, and global scales.

Students will analyze the mapped plot of the historic Ocean Chlorophyll Concentrations at key locations around the world for the period of 1998-2018.

Students identify patterns in chlorophyll concentration data to formulate their explanations of phytoplankton distribution. 

Students identify patterns and describe the relationship between chlorophyll concentration and incoming shortwave radiation.