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. 

Botanists research plant characteristics like their physiological processes, their evolutionary history, resistance to disease, relationships to other parts of the Biosphere and within the Earth System. 

Many botanists work in different locations; some may work indoors in laboratories and offices conducting experiments while others may work in agriculture and spend much of their time outdoors.  Some botanists may also discover new plant species and share their learning with the public through tours and events.

This mini lesson engages students by watching a NASA video related to seasonal chlorophyll concentration as it relates to net radiation using NASA's Aqua satellite. Students will examine the model and answer the questions.

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.

Learn about Erika Podest's journey from a childhood in Panama to a career at NASA as a Research Scientist. 

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

Explore and connect to the GLOBE Air Quality protocol bundle. 

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.

The activities in this guide will help students understand variations in environmental parameters by examining connections among different phenomena measured on local, regional and global scales.