Students will analyze the mapped plot of the historic Ocean Chlorophyll Concentrations at key locations around the world for the period of 1998-2018.

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 review the NASA video showing biosphere data over the North Atlantic Ocean as a time series animation displaying a decade of phytoplankton blooms and answer questions.

Students will explore the Nitrogen Cycle by modeling the movement of a nitrogen atom as it passes through the cycle. Students will stop in the different reservoirs along the way, answering questions about the processes that brought them to the different reservoirs.  

This lesson was based on an activity from UCAR Center for Science Education. 

Explore using units for calculations with Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). NDVI is a ratio of different light wavelength reflectance which can be used to map the density of green vegetation.

Students observe seasonal images of Monthly Leaf Area, looking for any changes that are occurring throughout the year.