The Geosphere is associated with solid portions of the Earth. It includes the continental and oceanic crust and all other layers of the Earth's interior.  This includes all rocks, sediments and soils, surface landforms and the processes that shape the Earth's surface.

The purpose of this activity is for students to create a desktop soil profile based on the biome region of the United States where your school is located.

GLOBE protocols and learning activities that complement the Soil Moisture phenomenon through hands-on investigations are detailed. 

Use the Data Literacy Cube to guide students’ exploration of data to enrich their observations and inferences.  This is a flexible resource that may be used with a variety of graphical representations of data.  This activity requires a graph for students to evaluate.   Fo

In this activity, students investigate three different soil samples with varying moisture content. They use a soil moisture probe to determine the percentage (by volume) of water in each of the soil samples.

Watch NASA videos about aerosols and volcanic ash.

This mini-lesson guides students' observations of soil moisture anomalies (how much the moisture content was above or below the norm) for the continental US in May 2018.

Learn about volcanic ash and watch a visualization of the Calbuco volcano to see how ash travels around the world. 

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.

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.