The purpose of this activity is to have students use an Earth Systems perspective to identify the various causes associated with changes to Earth's forests as they review Landsat imagery of site locations from around the world.

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.

This lesson is taken from NASA's Phytopia: Discovery of the Marine Ecosystem written in partnership with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science with funding from the National Science Foundation.

Students use Phytopia: Exploration of the Marine Ecosystem, a computer-based tool, to investigate various phytoplankton species and topics relating to phytoplankton biology. 

Students will analyze and interpret maps of the average net atmospheric radiation to compare the flow of energy from the Sun toward Earth in different months and for cloudy versus clear days. Students will draw conclusions and support them with evidence.

This activity is one of a series in the collection, The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change activities. 

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.

In this lesson students will calculate the size to distance ratio of the Sun and the Moon from Earth to determine how a solar eclipse can occur.

Using a “fun-size” bag of rainbow bite-sized candies learners will place different colored candies on a diagram of the Sun-Earth system to show different space weather conditions during solar minimum and solar maximum.

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.