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.

Explore and connect to biosphere protocols in GLOBE. Each protocol has related Earth System Data Explorer datasets identified, as well.

Explore and connect to the GLOBE Rivers and Lakes protocol bundle. 

The Earth's system is characterized by the interaction of processes that take place on molecular (very small) and planetary (very large) spatial scales, as well as on short and long time scales. Before scientists may begin their work with these data, it is important that they understand what the data are.

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 will analyze a pie chart (circle graph) showing the distribution of different parts of the Earth system's absorption and reflection of energy. 

Background information on the El Nino Southern Oscillation or ENSO.

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

Students will analyze a graph showing the amounts of peak energy received at local noon each day over the year changes with different latitudes.