This USGS activity leads students to an understanding of what remote sensing means and how researchers use it to study changes to the Earth’s surface, such as deforestation.
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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.
Students observe seasonal images of Monthly Normalized Difference Vegetation, looking for any changes in vegetation that are occurring throughout the year. They put the images in order based on what they know about seasonal changes.
Students will analyze and interpret graphs to compare the flow of (shortwave) energy from the Sun toward China over the course of a year on cloudy versus clear days. Students will draw a conclusion and support it with evidence.
Students will analyze and interpret maps of the average net atmospheric radiation to compare the flow of energy from the Sun toward Earth in different months and for cloudy versus clear days. Students will draw conclusions and support them with evidence.
Students review a visualization showing a global view of the top-of-atmosphere longwave radiation from January 26 and 27, 2012. They review the supporting text and analyze the data in the visualization to answer questions.
Students can interact with NASA data to build a custom visualizations of local, regional, or global plant growth patterns over time, using the Earth System Data Explorer to generate plots of satellite data as they develop models of this phenomenon.
This story map lesson plan allows students to explore global phytoplankton distribution using chlorophyll concentration data in a 5 E-learning cycle. Students will investigate the processes that allow phytoplankton populations to thrive, as well as how their role in the carbon cycle impacts the other spheres of the Earth System.
Students interpret a double bar/column chart comparing the number of tropical cyclones in different locations.