The purpose of this activity is for students to create a desktop soil profile based on the biome region of the United States where your school is located.

Students will identify and describe the relationship between land cover classification and surface temperature as they relate to the urban heat island effect. Students will also describe patterns between population density and the locations of urban heat islands. 

This learning activity uses data acquired by the TOPEX/Poseidon altimeter, a joint project of NASA and the French Space Agency, to investigate the relationship between the topography of a sea-floor feature and the topography of the overlying sea surface.

Review this page to learn about the background of volcanoes and their eruptions.

Hands-on demonstration of the El Niño Effect, trade winds, and upwelling provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab.

Our Earth is a dynamic system with diverse subsystems that interact in complex ways. Questions that scientists have about the Earth as a System may include the following. As you learn more about the Earth System, reflect on these questions. 

Air quality is a measure of the pollution level in the air. Polluted air can be caused by many things. There are manmade and natural sources of emissions. 

Background information on ocean circulation.

Through guided inquiry, students will identify interactions of the four major scientific spheres on Earth: biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and geosphere. They will then identify how these systems are represented and interact in their classroom aquarium.

Students will analyze how surface (skin) temperatures vary across a community and determine what factors contribute to this variation. Students will describe how human activity can affect the local environment.