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.

This mini lesson engages students by watching a NASA video related to seasonal chlorophyll concentration as it relates to net radiation using NASA's Aqua satellite. Students will examine the model and answer the questions.

Students identify patterns and describe the relationship between chlorophyll concentration and incoming shortwave radiation. 

Phytoplankton distribution background information.

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

This graphic organizer may be used to help students analyze the processes and components of Earth System phenomena.

This video provides tips for teachers on helping students make sense of data to help them understand and work with data. It is based on the work of Kristin Hunter-Thomson of Dataspire.org and uses data from the My NASA Data Earth System Data Explorer.

Students will make a claim about whether changing albedo contributes to changes in Arctic habitats.

Background information on the El Nino Southern Oscillation or ENSO.

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.