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.

Explore using units for calculations with Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). NDVI is a ratio of different light wavelength reflectance which can be used to map the density of green vegetation.

Students watch a 28-minute video on NASA's involvement in fighting wildfires.

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

This mini lesson engages students with answering questions on cause and effect relationships by watching a NASA video related to changing forests in the Pacific Northwest from 1984 to 2011.

Check out the Arctic and Earth SIGNs video to explore how climate models are used in climate change research.

Read about Dr. Valerie L. Thomas and her contributions to the Landsat program. Since her Landsat days, Thomas, who later invented and patented the Illusion Transmitter, has actively supported women in STEM. Today, she is still teaching and participating in hands-on STEM programs.

Students review a video that models the global impact of smoke from fires to develop an understanding of how models can be used to interpret and forecast phenomena in the Earth System. 

Students identify and classify kinds of land cover (such as vegetation, urban areas, water, and bare soil) in Landsat satellite images of Phoenix, Arizona taken in 1984 and 2018.

This mini lesson engages students by watching a NASA video related to plant growth activity around the world using data from the NASA/NOAA Suomi NPP satellite and answering questions on these stability and change relationships.