Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is affected by many processes including fires, deforestation, and plant respiration. Students will evaluate a Landsat image to determine the rate of carbon dioxide sequestration in a particular area.

Students synthesize information from My NASA Data maps and texts from the EPA website to determine how levels of criteria pollutants have changed from 2005 to 2021. This research will prepare them to respond to the lesson’s essential questions during a Socratic seminar.

Students review a video that models the global impact of smoke from fires to develop an understanding of how models can be used to interpret and forecast phenomena in the Earth System. 

The fires in Greece during the summer of 2007 devastated large tracks of forest and ground cover in this Mediterranean region. Students analyze these data to determine the scale, area, and percentage of the forest impacted by of these fires.

Chemists study atomic and molecular structures and their interactions. 

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.

Use the Earth System Data Explorer to analyze data and make a claim about which 2018 eruption was larger, Kilauea, HI or Ambae Island, Vanuatu.

In this 5E’s lesson, students observe maps that show smoke and AOD levels surrounding Fresno, California at the time when the 2020 Creek Fire was burning. Students construct a claim that identifies a relationship between fire-related data and air quality data.