Earth is made up of five major parts or subsystems: the Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Biosphere, Cryosphere, and Geosphere. Each major part is connected to the other parts in a complex web of processes.

Helping students build their understanding of Earth's spheres and how they are connected is difficult.  Review the graphics to help identify the parts of the Earth System and the processes that connect them at the local, regional, and global scales.

Our Earth is a dynamic system with diverse subsystems that interact in complex ways. Questions that scientists have about the Earth as a System may include the following. As you learn more about the Earth System, reflect on these questions. 

This graphic organizer may be used to help students analyze the processes and components of Earth System phenomena.

Students can interact with NASA data to build visualizations of monthly soil moisture data on a custom map or graph, using the Earth System Data Explorer.

The electromagnetic spectrum is comprised of all frequencies of electromagnetic radiation that propagate energy and travel through space in the form of waves. 

The Earth System Satellite Images help students observe and analyze global Earth and environmental data, understand the relationship among different environmental variables, and explore how the data change seasonally and over longer timescales.  

This resource collection models for you (and your students) the process of analyzing solar radiation and phytoplankton data collected by satellites in the Arctic waters. 

An urban heat island is a phenomenon that is best described when a city experiences much warmer temperatures than in nearby rural areas. The sun’s heat and light reach the city and the country in the same way. The difference in temperature between urban and less-developed rural areas has to do with how well the surfaces in each environment absorb and hold heat.

A system is an organized group of related components that work together to carry out functions that the individual parts cannot do alone.  The Earth System, like the human body system, are similar in that they comprise diverse parts that interact in complex ways.