This textbook chapter presents a real case study involving the the logging of an old stand forest from three perspectives, that of the environmentalists, the wood products industry, and a politician. An associated writing activity engages students... (View More) in reviewing the different viewpoints, and writing a "letter to the editor" for or against the logging of old growth forest. This is chapter 3 in the unit, A New World View, which introduces global systems science, emphasizing the concepts of environmental diversity, Earth as a system, and sustainability. The resource includes a textbook chapter, integrated hands-on and inquiry activities, links to current news articles, and a suite of pre- and post-unit assessments. A teacher's guide supports classroom use. The resource is part of Global Systems Science (GSS), an interdisciplinary course for high school students that emphasizes how scientists from a wide variety of fields work together to understand significant problems of global impact. (View Less)

In this lesson plan students use temperature data to look at the measures of central tendency. By using mean, median, and mode, students will gain a better understanding about weather patterns from several locales throughout Virginia.

In this problem set, students calculate precisely how much carbon dioxide is in a gallon of gasoline. A student worksheet provides step-by-step instructions as students calculate the production of carbon dioxide. The investigation is supported the... (View More) textbook "Climate Change," part of "Global System Science," an interdisciplinary course for high school students that emphasizes how scientists from a wide variety of fields work together to understand significant problems of global impact. (View Less)

In this activity, students compare and analyze lapse rates (rate of decrease in atmospheric temperature with height) for two U.S. locations. It requires the use of atmospheric temperature data downloaded from the Internet into a student developed... (View More) Excel spreadsheet. A detailed instructional tutorial (with sample screen images) for importing data from the Internet and downloading it into Excel spreadsheets is included. This lesson uses student- and citizen science-friendly microsets of authentic NASA Earth system science data from the MY NASA DATA project. It also includes data analysis tools. (View Less)

In this lesson, students analyze land cover change in order to help them grasp the extent, significance, and consequences of land cover change; and to introduce them to the perspective of space-based Earth observations. Students learn to identify... (View More) kinds of land cover (such as roads, fields, urban areas, and lakes) in Landsat satellite images. They decide which land cover types allow the passage of water into the soil (pervious) and which types do not allow it (impervious). They consider some effects of increasing impervious surface area on ecosystem health. Students then make land cover maps using two Landsat satellite images taken about a decade apart, and quantify the change of land cover from pervious to impervious surface. They also make predictive maps of what they think the nature and extent of land cover change in the area will be in the year 2025, and speculate about the consequences for the availability of water for people and ecosystems. Students justify in writing their predictive maps and their thoughts about the consequences of change. This activity uses Landsat images of Phoenix, Arizona; links are also provided for finding Landsat images of other cities. (View Less)