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 investigation introduces students to the significant environmental changes occurring around the world. The investigation uses NASA satellite images of Brazil to illustrate deforestation as one type of environmental change.

Students use Phytopia: Exploration of the Marine Ecosystem, a computer-based tool, to investigate various phytoplankton species and topics relating to phytoplankton biology. 

Dr. Wickland works at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, where she oversees the planning and implementation of NASA's Terrestrial Ecology research program and leads its Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Focus Area. She coordinates research programs in land cover and land use change, ocean biogeochemistry, terrestrial ecology, and biodiversity. 

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. 

Explore and connect to biosphere protocols in GLOBE. Each protocol has related Earth System Data Explorer datasets identified, as well.

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.

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

This mini lesson focuses on the 2015-2016 El Niño event and how its weather conditions triggered regional disease outbreaks throughout the world. Students will review a NASA article and watch the associated video to use as a tool to compare with maps related to 2015-2016 rainfall and elevated disease risk, and answer the questions.

In addition to the changes brought about by natural forces, it has recently become apparent that a relative newcomer to planet Earth — the human being — has become a powerful agent of environmental change.