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.
Educational Resources - Search Tool
Use the Data Literacy Cube to guide students’ exploration of mapped data of the Earth System to enrich their observations and inferences. This is a flexible resource that may be used with a variety of mapped images. This activity requires a map of Earth data for students to evaluate.
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.
Students observe seasonal images of Monthly Leaf Area, looking for any changes that are occurring throughout the year.
Students learn how to estimate the "energy efficiency" of photosynthesis, or the amount of energy that plants absorb for any given location on Earth. This is the ratio of the amount of energy stored to the amount of light energy absorbed and is used to evaluate and model photosynthesis efficiency.
Students will describe how the spread of COVID-19 is affected by population density and explain why patterns in the spread of COVID-19 are happening over time.
Students identify patterns in chlorophyll concentration data to formulate their explanations of phytoplankton distribution.
Examine the images to see the projected differences in land use between 1900 and 2100.
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.
Global Phytoplankton Distribution Story Map