Air quality is a measure of the pollution level in the air. Polluted air can be caused by many things. There are manmade and natural sources of emissions. 

Students use scale to determine the area of volcanic deposits following the March 3, 2015 eruption of Chile's Mount Villarrica stratovolcano, one of the country's most active volcanoes.

Explore and connect to the GLOBE Oceans protocol bundle. 

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

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

In this lesson, students will investigate the drivers of climate change, including adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, sea level rise, and the effect of decreasing sea ice on temperatures.

Students will analyze images and data from a variety of NASA sensors and satellites depicting the wildfires of northern Canada to understand the state of the atmosphere at the time. Then they will answer a series of questions. 

Phytoplankton distribution background information.

Students interpret AQI maps and charts to compare today’s AQI with the past five days. Using the EPA’s air quality activity guides, students create a social media post for residents of their region providing key information related to today’s AQI.

Students synthesize information from My NASA Data maps and texts from the EPA website to determine how levels of criteria pollutants have changed from 2005 to 2021. This research will prepare them to respond to the lesson’s essential questions during a Socratic seminar.