This StoryMap lesson plan allows students to explore ocean circulation patterns as they relate to the world's ocean garbage patches using NASA ocean currents data. Students will investigate the forces that contribute to ocean circulation patterns, and how debris, especially plastics, travel from land to the garbage patches. 

Students review an animation of monthly average wind speed at 10 meters above the ocean surface for our global ocean to analyze the relationship between winds and ocean surface currents.

Students will observe monthly satellite data of the North Atlantic to identify relationships among key science variables that include sea surface salinity (SS), air temperature at the ocean surface (AT), sea surface temperature (ST), evaporation (EV), precipitation (PT), and evaporation minus pre

Students will identify and describe the relationship between watersheds and phytoplankton distribution. 

Students identify patterns in chlorophyll concentration data to formulate their explanations of phytoplankton distribution. 

In this activity, students explore three indicators of drought are: soil moisture, lack of precipitation, and decreased streamflows. Students investigate each of these parameters develop a sense for the effects of drought on land.

Students will explore the Nitrogen Cycle by modeling the movement of a nitrogen atom as it passes through the cycle. Students will stop in the different reservoirs along the way, answering questions about the processes that brought them to the different reservoirs.  

This lesson was based on an activity from UCAR Center for Science Education. 

For over 20 years, satellite instruments have measured the sea surface height of our ever-changing oceans.  This video of images shows the complicated patterns of rising and falling ocean levels across the globe from 1993 to 2015.

Interpret the map, or model, to find patterns in the occurrence of tropical cyclones from 1842 through 2018.

Students are introduced to the Earthrise phenomenon by seeing the Earth as the Apollo 8 astronauts viewed our home planet for the first time from the Moon.  They will analyze a time series of mapped plots of Earth science variables that NASA monitors to better understand the Earth