Air, Water, Land, & Life: A Global Perspective

The Earth System Satellite Images, along with the Data Literacy Cubes, help the learner visualize how different Earth system variables change over time, identify patterns, and determine relationships among two variables in three months.

In this mini lesson, students analyze a bar graph showing the relative forcings from natural and human factors that affect Earth's climate. They use information from this graph to assess the relative importance of these factors.

NASA visualizers take data – numbers, codes – and turn them into animations people can see and quickly understand.

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.

Dr. Stackhouse uses satellite observations of the Earth-atmosphere system from multiple sources to study Earth’s global energy cycle, especially the processes that cause variability from global to regional scales. Dr. Stackhouse also develops new data products and data systems to help analyze these processes and more efficiently understand and use renewable energy sources.

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. 

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 explore the spatial patterns observed in meteorological data and learn how this information is used to predict weather and understand climate behavior.

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.