In this activity, students explore three indicators of drought are: soil moisture, lack of precipitation, and decreased streamflows. Students investigate each of these parameters develop a sense for the effects of drought on land.

In this activity, students use satellite images from the NASA Landsat team to quantify changes in glacier cover over time from 1986 to 2018. 

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.

This activity introduces students to aspects of the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and litho/geosphere and how they are interrelated. It is designed to promote an interest in authentic investigations of Earth using images acquired by astronauts as the hook.

Students discuss their current understanding of what Earth systems are and how they work and consider how to identify the boundaries of a region for Earth system study.

Use the Data Literacy Cube to guide students’ exploration of mapped data of the Earth System to enrich their observations and inferences.  This is a flexible resource that may be used with a variety of mapped images.  This activity requires a map of Earth data for students to evalu

To help students articulate and integrate their existing knowledge about the air, water, soil, and living things by viewing them as interacting parts of a system

Students will describe the changes in a newly-formed volcanic island over the first three years of its life.  

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.