Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is affected by many processes including fires, deforestation, and plant respiration. Students will evaluate a Landsat image to determine the rate of carbon dioxide sequestration in a particular area.

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.

In this lesson, students will investigate the drivers of climate change, including adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, sea level rise, and the effect of decreasing sea ice on temperatures.

Selected GLOBE protocols and learning activities which support some aspect of the investigation of scale, proportion and quantity are outlined.

Phytoplankton distribution background information.

Background information on deforestation.

In this activity, students will use sea-level rise data to create models and compare short-term trends to long-term trends. They will then determine whether sea-level rise is occurring based on the data.

Explore and connect to biosphere protocols in GLOBE. Each protocol has related Earth System Data Explorer datasets identified, as well.

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

My NASA Data has recently released several new resources, StoryMaps, for use in educational settings.