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.

In this story map lesson students will learn how living with a star can teach us about our universe. Through a series of learning activities, students will examine the benefits and hazards of living with a star, describe and/or demonstrate how we use eclipses to study the Sun and its features, and investigate how our Sun may be used to learn about other stars and our universe. 

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. 

The Solar Eclipse Implementation Sequence provides a series of lesson plans for students to learn about solar eclipses.

The Urban Heat Island Implementation Sequence provides a series of lessons and activities for students to learn about the processes that create differences in surface temperatures, as well as how human activities have led to the creation of urban heat islands.