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 experiment, students make a claim about the cause of ocean currents and then develop a model to explain the role of salinity and density in deep ocean currents.  This lesson is modified from "Visit to an Ocean Planet" Caltech and NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Are you looking for a data story to use with your students that features ocean circulation and its connection to the Earth system?  Consider using the following resources in your classroom today!

This story map lesson plan allows students to explore ocean circulation patterns as they relate to the world's ocean garbage patches using NASA ocean currents data.

In this interactive, students will learn the basics of space weather by engaging in a short interactive which introduces key terms: space weather, sunspot, solar flare, coronal mass ejection, and solar wind. Students will be able to identify the causes and hazards of space weather.

Students are divided into three different groups and are assigned a category of drivers of change in regional trends of freshwater storage (Climate Change, Human Activity, and Natural Variability).

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.

In this story map lesson students will learn how living with a star can teach us about our universe. Through a series of learning activities, students will examine the benefits and hazards of living with a star, describe and/or demonstrate how we use eclipses to study the Sun and its features, and investigate how our Sun may be used to learn about other stars and our universe. 

This story map 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. 

The activities in this guide will help students understand variations in environmental parameters by examining connections among different phenomena measured on local, regional and global scales.