In recent years more and more attention has been paid to the Earth's climate and how it is evolving. When studying hurricanes it is important to understand that, for a hurricane to grow, warm water is an absolute necessity. So if the Earth continues to warm, what does that mean for hurricanes and their intensity? In this lesson, the student will look at past hurricane data by researching the intensity ... Full description.

El Nino and La Nina are important temperature fluctuations in surface waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean. In this lesson, students will create maps and line graphs of data to compare the effects of El Nino and La Nina at two different longitudinal locations, but at the same latitude, using sea surface temperature and precipitation from real satellite data. Full description.

This page is part of a larger USGS project called Water Science for Schools. This section covers different water-use topics and categories of water-use. A Spanish translation is available. Full description.

This lesson will connect the idea of the tilt and orbit of the earth (changing of seasons) with monthly changes in snow/ice. Students will evaluate changes in the snow/ice cover from January 2008 to June 2008 and compare to the tilt of the Earth and position in orbit (seasonal change) using monthly Snow/Ice Data from January 2008 to June 2008 from MyNASAData website. Full description.

This booklet provides a brief introduction to the concept of plate tectonics and complements the visual and written information in This Dynamic Planet, a map published in 1994 by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the Smithsonian Institution. The booklet highlights some of the people and discoveries that advanced the development of the theory and traces its progress since its proposal. Although ... Full description.

The purpose of this resource is to familiarize students with modeling as it relates to remote sensing and digitized images. Students will use the symbolic map created in the beginning activity to produce a digitized image and begin to see why ground verification of satellite data is necessary. Full description.

The purpose of the resource is to introduce students to Landsat images and how to identify the land cover types within those images. Full description.

The purpose of the resource is to develop hypotheses about which environmental factors are most important to plants. Full description.

The purpose of the resource is to determine the major land cover type at a Land Cover Sample Site. Full description.

The purpose of this resource is to use a land cover type map to make environmentally sound decisions. Full description.