Dr. West is former NASA DEVELOP National Program participant, Center Lead, and current mentor to the program. She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in ecology at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University.

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.

Learn about how Janine Pollack, an Environmental Engineer, got her start at NASA and the kinds of work she does as an engineer.

Joshua Stevens,Lead for Data Visualization for NASA Earth Observatory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Learn how he translates data from NASA missions and instruments into intuitive maps, charts and graphics which meet high quality standards and are consistent with current research.

Explore and connect to the GLOBE Air Quality protocol bundle. 

Earth is made up of five major parts or subsystems: the Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Biosphere, Cryosphere, and Geosphere. Each major part is connected to the other parts in a complex web of processes.

Dr. Tom Loveland is a research geographer at EROS and director of the USGS Land Cover Institute. He has been engaged in research on the use of remote sensing for land use and land cover investigations for over 25 years and has conducted studies that have spanned local to global scales. He was among the first to create continental and global-scale land cover data sets derived from remotely sensed imagery.

Elizabeth Forsbacka is an instrument manager. She leads a diverse team to design, build and test Earth or space science instruments. She says "My job is to build a good team that can do it all. Our work from design through delivery of the spacecraft usually takes about four years." See what it's like to work on this sort of project.

Learn how Dr. Anyamba, Research Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Biospheric Sciences Laboratory explore how Earth's Biosphere and Geosphere respond to climate variability.

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.